Bringing deprivation into stark relief

This is what I’ve already learned this week: $7 makes a tremendous difference when shopping for a week’s worth of food.

Last year’s Hunger Challenge allowed each of the participants to shop for $21 of food for the week. I managed to clock in at just under $20 for the week, but it was one of the most stressful shopping expeditions of my life. I spent an interminable amount of time at The Berkeley Bowl, stalking back and forth along the aisles in what became a frantic hunt for the perfect combination of food that would nourish and sustain me for a week, yet keep within my limited budget.

The Hunger Challenge is an academic exercise, to a point. Here, it says. Learn what it’s like to constrain your food spending. Discover how listless you feel after several days without your usual ration of fresh, organic produce and quality protein. Lust after coffee you cannot afford. And, at the end of the week, meditate on what you have just learned about how difficult it is for the more than 35 million people in the United States who are living on food stamps.

This year, thanks to the economic stimulus package, I got to shop with $28 in my pocket rather than $21. That extra $7 went far, partially because I used it wisely, but mostly because it was there. Having 25 percent more money to play with meant 25 percent more food. That’s not a bad thing.

A note of disclosure here: I fully planned to be a complete participant in the Hunger Challenge this year. As with last year, I had blocked out seven days on my calendar during which I planned to subsist on the $28 worth of food without any cheating.

Then I went to Burning Man, which had a much more profound effect on me than I expected, and which required more recovery than I expected at just the time when I needed to be focused on the Hunger Challenge. And the rest of life got in the way.

I had to make the call, and my decision was this: I would do the shopping and see what I could get for $28 this year. I will document what I learned. I will provide recipes and meal plans, and, for the most part, I will eat the food I bought for the week. But I’m going to buy the occasional Diet Coke over the course of the week. I’m not eschewing wine and coffee. And on the occasions when I have a dinner planned this week or, say, a conference to attend, I will just eat what’s in front of me.

But it definitely gives me pause, this approach this year. It almost brings the Hunger Challenge into starker relief for me—it is something I can dip into and dip out of. Though I was able to just slip back into my regular eating life last year at the end, for that one week, I did feel that kinship in deprivation, felt that much closer to understanding how difficult it is for so many people. This year, my approach feels a bit soft, and, therefore, draws an even more poignant contrast for me. I get to make choices in this matter. So many people do not.

Still, as I shopped, I was amazed how much my approach had shifted, just based on the lessons of last year. Tomorrow, I’ll document how I shopped this year and what I bought.