Back to Reality...

Two things I learned from my food stamp experience were ‘planning’ and ‘family’. While on food stamps, I ate relatively normal as I usually do on my college budget, but I learned that food stamps takes away from the ‘convenience’ and ‘luxuries’ of eating. During the ten days I had to drive home to New York and I had to plan my meals ahead. I couldn’t just conveniently stop at a McDonalds on the side of the road when I got hungry. Even when coming to campus, I had to pack my lunch in the morning… I couldn’t just run into the commons when I got hungry in the middle of the afternoon. Furthermore I didn’t drink any coffee for ten days (which I’m probably better off to be quite honest!) because that just wasn’t a luxury I could afford. Overall, although I didn’t eat much differently, I had to think ahead planning all of my meals because I didn’t have the funds to just grab food on the go.

I also took away from this experience the concept of ‘family’. I participated in this program with my two roommates and while we do often have ‘family’ dinners, we maybe have them only two or three times a week, but during the ten days my roommates and I went grocery shopping together, as well as planning, preparing and eating dinner together every night. Along with planning what we would eat at each dinner ahead of time, we also worked to coordinate our schedules so that we would all be together each night for dinner.

Through this experience, I was given insight into the everyday life of a SNAP participant. I learned the everyday foods (that I typically take for granted) that I had to forgo while on the SNAP program. First thing I bought off the SNAP challenge? Coffee… and not just any old regular coffee, I went all out and purchased the Caramel Macchiato…sometimes the alarm just goes off too early and I’m rushing and I need to buy that coffee on the go to keep me moving all day and for the past ten days I’ve missed that luxury and convenience terribly!