Being Poor and Eating Healthy: It might not be as easy as it seems

[kifaru]

Anybody here ever been poor? I mean really poor. I mean you got to figure out how to make $2 feed you for 7 days poor. Well even if you haven't been that poor, if you shop and are less than well to do you may have noticed something. Vegetables and fruit are expensive. Here's something else you may have noticed. Cheap food is relatively high in fat, simple carbohydrates, sodium, and high fructose corn syrup but low in vitamins. The thing is what do you do when faced with this food dilemna? Do you only eat beans, potatoes, and hot dogs to fill your belly or do you starve and get that bell pepper, spinach, and broccoli.?

Copyright K.L. Jones.

[kifaru]

Stamps for fast food?!!? Fast food lobbyists had to advocate for this.

jahluv said:

Just got a bit harder...

-props to the LA Eastside blog for the info...

Jack takes food stamps now... WTF!? When I was a kid and my mom had to use 'em for about a year or so, the cashiers at Boys market would act as impromptu nutritionist - yanking every unhealthful item on the belt 'cause it couldn't be paid for with food stamps. Now you can get your grease on?!

[GodsavetheQueer]

If I didn't have food stamps I don't know what i'd do.

Can I just say how pissed I'd be (or am, since it's apparently in practice) if fast food places allowed food stamps??
Payless takes EBT too. Some gas stations do too, which I coulda used a few months ago when I was bummin gas money to get to work.

[PurpleZoe]

Groceries used to be ridiculous investments before I started eating a vegan menu. If you're not buying all the meat substitutes it's far from pricey, contrary to popular opinion. After I got used to cooking from scratch (which was totally foreign to me), I found myself amazed at how cheap it is. In this day and age though, growing ones own food is the move. The aerogarden might be a worthy investment. Organicaseed.com sells a variety of non-genetically modified (a.k.a poison) seeds.

As far as food pricing goes beans are highly recommended and crazy cheap (soap them in bulk in huge soup pots, blend them for fryable black bean burger batters and freeze them, etc). You can do just about anything with them: blackbean burgers (flour, water to desired consistency, beans, garlic, onion) , chikpea burgers (see previous), chikpea tuna (add kelp and vegenaise), blackbean brownies (add chocolate powder), Boston baked black beans (add ketchup, mustard, and maple syrup... it's bomb despite the odd ingredients), Blackbeans over regular pasta (bomb). Bean flours (technically you can dehydrate them and grind them to powder at home) can be used for anything regular flours can be used for, like flat breads and etc. They're much easier to make than they seem and you don't have all the extra nonsense added in.

You can do alot with rice as well, including making your own rice milk by blending 1 part rice to 3 parts water, and straining the rice out. Add a bit of salt and syrup to taste and you can achieve a homemade version of Rice Dream.

I think the more we get back to making things from scratch the better off we'll be where food prices are concerned. It's definitely healthier.

Unintentional but relevant plug: Issue 6 of purplemag has a mini green Soulfood cookbook in it that can help with utilizing inexpensive staples. Also useful is the Dirty South cookbook.

[Mlle d. Sade]

PurpleZoe said:

Unintentional but relevant plug: Issue 6 of purplemag has a mini green Soulfood cookbook in it that can help with utilizing inexpensive staples. Also useful is the Dirty South cookbook.

I sure could go for some spring rolls or some salmon croquettes (not vegan but another southern invention of poverty that is relatively healthy).

It helps to read stuff like Paula Dean's magazine and some kinda fair thing I read for easy, simple recipes for hearty food.
The hardest thing about eating healthy is some people's insistence on "bird food".