Additionally, in a study conducted in 1998 that categorized the 11,037 new food products introduced that year, over 2,000 of them were candy, gum, and snacks, while only 375 were fruits and vegetables. Not only that, but citizens in our country have more food available to them than ever before. In her book Food Politics, Marion Nestle points to data from the United States Department of Agriculture, indicating that the U.S. food supply increased from 3,200 calories per capita in 1970 to 3,900 in the late 1990s. This means that in the United States, there is enough food for each of us to consume nearly twice what we need.
Meats, grains, and sweets are the most profitable products, which is why they constitute the lion’s share of advertising dollars. They are also the cheapest calories on the market. In a study by researchers at the University of Washington, scientists spent two years comparing the costs of 370 products sold at Seattle supermarkets. They found that high-calorie, energy-dense foods cost on average only $1.76 per 1,000 calories, whereas low-energy, nutritious foods cost $18.16 for the same amount of calories. What is perhaps more striking is that the high-calorie foods dropped in price by 1.8 percent, whereas low-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables increased by 19.5 percent during the course of the study.
Now, there are some folks, like the people at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, who push the notion that it is not the industry’s fault that people are eating more, and eating more of these high-calorie foods. They believe that it is up to the consumer to make the nutritional choices that are best for them. However, the less money you have, the less choice you have. Most people know that feeding kids a Happy Meal for dinner a few nights a week is not the best nutritional choice, but when that is the cheapest, most filling, and most accessible option, it’s clear why it is also one of the most common.
During our experiment, we couldn’t afford either fast food or most fruits and vegetables. I never knew how much I would miss my vegetables until I started this endeavor. My mind continued to spin when trying to comprehend the interconnection of all the issues. I thought about how a third of the children in the United States eat fast food every day. I thought about the obesity epidemic. I thought about the global paradox that over 800 million people on earth don’t have enough to eat, yet in the developing world, over a billion people are overweight. Then I was struck by something more immediate: the realization that we would be eating the same foods for the rest of the month.
The idea of eating the same staple ingredients for weeks at a time was already beginning to feel daunting. Stumped, we did some brainstorming. We looked at Mexican, Chinese, and Indian cuisines for inspiration about how to avoid the mundane. These cuisines use some of the same basic ingredients and make a wide variety of dishes, and we were hoping for similar success. Yet, without bell peppers in our fajitas, or cauliflower in our aloo gobi, the next few weeks would be bleak.
Later that night, I checked our blog. We had received a few donations for the Community Resource Center from complete strangers. It wasn’t a lot, but $135 by the second day wasn’t a bad start, especially considering that we weren’t advertising our project to anyone. We simply told some friends and our family members, and all of a sudden we were receiving e-mails and, better yet, money to give to our local center. If this turned out to be a way to help people, then it would be worth the sacrifice. After a less-than-filling dinner, I looked at Kerri, and she stared back.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“Peanut butter?”
“Yeah.”
“Definitely.”
We tried for a moment to convince ourselves that this tablespoon of peanut butter was a good source of protein, which it generally is, but the truth was that it was the closest thing to dessert within our budget, and we craved it. It felt good to indulge in this small way.
When we woke the next morning, I remembered that it was Back to School Night, the single occasion all year when most parents come to the school to meet their students’ teachers. I knew that it would be a late evening, so Kerri planned to come home relatively soon after school and cook one of the meals we had decided on the night before: chana masala. This Indian dish is simple: cooked garbanzo beans in a tomato-based sauce, mixed with spices like garam masala, turmeric, cumin, and paprika. It doesn’t seem like much, but with rice, it can be quite filling. The thought of the evening meal propelled me through most of the day, but by the time parents started showing up at the school that evening, I was surprised to find that they, too, were wondering what I would be having for dinner.
During the ten minutes that teachers get with each batch of parents, I usually introduce myself and the goals of the course, then use the remainder of the time to answer questions. These questions usually cover a pretty wide range, as each parent has individual concerns about what the class will be like for his or her child. This year, things were different. By the time I got to the question and answer portion of my presentation, no one seemed to be worried about what their children would be learning. The first question came from a woman in the back of the room: “What’s it like to eat on a dollar a day?”
I didn’t expect to be answering questions about my diet in a room full of parents. So I did what most teachers do when they are caught off guard by an off-topic question from a student: I looked around the room. Before I could answer, a gentleman in the front row spoke. “Yeah, we heard all about this dollar-a-day thing. Tell us about it.” Anxiously, I glanced around again and saw that parents were smiling and seemed to be genuinely interested. I began to speak.
“Well, it’s just this project that my partner and I started a couple of days ago. We want to see if we can manage.”
“How long are you going to do it?” shouted another parent in the back.
“For the rest of the month.”
There was a collective gasp.
“What did you eat today?” a concerned mother asked.
I continued explaining our efforts for the remainder of our time together. Then, finally, the bell rang and I was saved. I thanked them for coming and reminded them to keep in contact with me throughout the year if they had any questions or concerns about their children. They lingered. I moved toward the door to signal that I was getting ready to meet the next group of parents, but several of them quickly approached me. Typically, at this point, some parents are eager to tell me about the individual needs of their kids. Tonight was different. Every conversation centered around our attempt to eat on a dollar a day. By the time they had all moved on to their students’ next class, I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “That was weird.” I hoped that the next class would be less inquisitive, but it wasn’t. As the night carried on, it seemed that the word was out with parents, and first period was just the warning shot. It wasn’t until the last group of the night, my journalism class, when things finally seemed to be winding down. Delaney, my student editor, led this session, but by the time she was done and we opened up for questions, the dollar diet had parents talking. I could only imagine the conversations in the cars of parents at the end of the night. Exhausted, I packed up and headed home.
As I walked in the door, I was tuckered out. It had been nine hours since I last ate, and the calories from my PB&J sandwich had been used up long ago. Kerri scooped some chana masala and rice onto plates, and I proceeded to recount the events of the night. She, too, was surprised by the parents’ interest in our project. She told me about her day, and as we ate, we talked about the ways in which we had already started looking at our lives differently. Kerri said that it seemed contradictory to be eating on a dollar a day while brushing her teeth with five-dollar toothpaste. We realized how rarely we stop to think about all that we have. Beyond the material luxuries that we enjoy—living in our home, owning cars, being able to care for our pets—we thought about the safety of our community, the security of our jobs, and many of the other privileges that often go unconsidered in our daily lives.
Then Kerri brought up a conversati
on that she’d had earlier in the day with a friend. In addition to all of the other privileges we enjoy, we also had the liberty to buy fresh produce, and lots of it. Kerri reflected on how frustrating it is to consider that over 36 million people in our country don’t have that same opportunity. Poor Americans are often unable to afford fresh produce. Some forgo it because, when given the option between an orange and a ninety-nine-cent taco, it is clear which one provides the most calories for the money. Others live in areas completely devoid of grocery stores. They don’t have access to high quality food and are left to find sustenance in fast-food restaurants, since grocery chains are reticent to enter these areas. As this phenomenon predominantly occurs in areas populated by people of color, it has been called “food apartheid.”
In his book Stuffed & Starved, Raj Patel outlines this “supermarket redlining,” a term borrowed from the illegal practice of banks using a red pen to circle these neighborhoods and refusing to lend to anyone within them. Patel makes it clear that this practice leaves poor people of color destined for nutritional inadequacy and cites several studies that show that when healthy food becomes available, more fruits and vegetables are eaten.
Even more surprising is a study cited by Patel and conducted by New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs, where an 8.8 percent difference in prices was found between low-income neighborhoods and more affluent ones. Poorer areas were paying more than well-to-do areas for the same foods. As dinner ended, we felt thankful for all that we had, and upon calculating our daily totals, which hovered around ninety cents for the day, we smiled and grabbed the peanut butter.
Over the next few days, our new food life started to show some signs of wear. I began getting headaches at work, and at one point felt so light-headed that I had to hold on to my lectern for stability. Soon after, I went to the school nurse between classes to ask her if she had any recommendations. Diane is one of the most helpful and in-touch people I have ever met. Her warmth and willingness to help keep students healthy are unmatched, and I knew I could lean on her in this moment of desperation.
“Drink more water. That’s what Gandhi did.”
Now, I am not Gandhi, but it was sage advice. I started downing water like an elephant at a watering hole, and it worked. I felt better. However, my initial boost of energy from the first two days had all but disappeared. I would come home and have to refrain from gorging myself on anything in sight. Days at work seemed longer, and by the end of the first week, I felt utterly exhausted. I wasn’t alone. That Friday, Kerri and I made the drive to Hollywood for one of my auditions. We left right after school got out, and within twenty minutes, Kerri fell asleep in the passenger seat. On the drive home, she put in a call to her mom to tell her about our experience at the lot where they shoot the TV show Heroes and one of our favorites, Dexter. Kerri’s mom was more interested in our health than the audition. She worried that we would become deficient in vitamin C and develop scurvy. Neither one of us had actually considered the possibility. Scurvy? Wasn’t that something that pirates got back in the olden days by staying out too long at sea? Her concern forced us to think about the possibility that we could actually hurt our bodies by doing this project, but we wanted to forge ahead.
The next morning I stepped onto the scale in our bathroom. In one week, I had already lost four pounds. Upon entering the kitchen, I could see that Kerri was also worried. She had foraged a lemon from our front yard and dropped a couple of slices in her water. I told her about my weight loss, and she admitted that she, too, had been thinking about her own half-pound fluctuations.
While we were both tired, we knew that the rest of our worries were probably psychological. Kerri had been staying late at work with the debate team, which she coaches, and the first few weeks of a new school year are always trying. We were paying extra attention to the way our bodies were reacting because we had made a significant change in diet. Prior to this challenge, we would feast on mountains of food, and now the meager portions on our small plates never looked like enough. Beyond that, we had started to get snippy with each other around dinnertime. Taking out the ingredients and setting them on the counter, I could see the resentment on Kerri’s face. This was a chore. The sounds of clanging cookware echoed the frustration in the room as the dogs ducked their heads and recoiled from our angst. Between calculating the costs of each individual ingredient and the pressure on Kerri to cook dinner after being at work all day, it helped to slam cupboard doors. No one wants to come home to housework after working all day, and my unwillingness to help was that of a prototypical teenager at odds with his or her parents. If Kerri asked me to do something, I sighed with obvious irritation. We ate dinner in relative silence. The next morning, we made up for lost energy by sleeping late and missing breakfast, but on Sunday I was determined to make up for two days of stress and exasperation.
I love breakfast foods, which is why I often put together our weekend morning meals. French toast, pancakes, waffles, hash browns—you name it and I’ve made it for breakfast at one point or another. When I awoke on Sunday, I was determined to celebrate our first week by taking a break from our drab oatmeal regimen and surprising Kerri with a pancake breakfast. After she had spent most evenings putting together our dinners, I needed to show her how much I appreciated her efforts. Plus, I knew that she was still bitter about the broccoli. On our first shopping trip we had picked up a one-pound bag of frozen broccoli at the dollar store; it was a great find. When we opened it, to our dismay, it was all pale green stems and one limp floret. Talk about false advertising. We couldn’t help but chuckle at our own anticipation. When Kerri portioned out our meal, she cut the tiny floret in half so that we each got some of the “good” part. The spoonful of peanut butter for dessert wasn’t enough to make up for the disappointment.
So that morning I felt compelled to go out of my way to make sure that she would at least enjoy breakfast. I went to the shelf, grabbed a cookbook, opened up to the pancake recipe, and started doing the math to see how much it would cost. If I got six pancakes out of the batch, they would come to five cents each. The only challenge would be getting some syrup. I sat there wondering how I could do this.
Then it struck me. Our “rules” stated that if something was free to everyone in our area, then we could eat it without charge. I didn’t even bother with shoes. I slipped on my sandals, donned a hooded sweatshirt, hopped in the car, and headed to a place I hadn’t been to in over a decade: McDonald’s. Fast-food joints had all kinds of free condiments, and in the mornings, syrup was one of them. I pulled open the doors and swerved past the seniors to the counter, on a mission. Before the woman behind the register could welcome me, I stated my case.
“Can I get some syrup?”
She didn’t even flinch. She made her way to the supply hiding under another part of the counter, pulled out two packages, and dropped them in my outstretched hand. The small plastic tubs were warm in my palm. Victory was mine. I would be able to wake Kerri to a delicious breakfast that would give her the motivation to keep going.
Before I pulled out of the parking lot to head for home, I thought about how easy that was. I wondered if I could do it again at the Burger King down the street; it was worth a shot. If I could acquire a little more I’d be able to save some for next weekend. Ten minutes later I burst out of Burger King’s doors with two more servings of sweet magic. I felt like a king but probably looked more like Gollum protecting his “precious” as I smiled in selfish joy. I was on a roll. I looked down at my passenger seat and saw the map that one of my students had drawn for me earlier in the week. If X marked the spot, it wouldn’t be long before I was harvesting some community oranges that lined the street near a housing development behind my work. My engine purred and the roads cleared to make way for me.
Of course, no quest would be complete without some type of tribulation. After I had driven up and down the streets of identical tract homes, I started to become discouraged. I had seen plenty of lemons, but no oranges. Ha
d my student misled me? Did she know the difference between oranges and lemons? How could I keep driving slowly through the pristine suburbs without alerting the neighborhood watch? Looking for fruit trees on the side of the road while driving isn’t exactly the safest of enterprises, but I could already taste the fresh-squeezed orange juice, and I wasn’t about to give up. Little did I know that my search was in vain, and close to an hour later I relented. Disappointed by my “fruitless” search, I clutched the syrup packages and remembered to be thankful for what I had.
Kerri loved the pancakes, mainly because she didn’t have to eat oatmeal, and I felt good about that. Later that day I would forage a lollipop at a local tattoo parlor, and even though Kerri felt that I was breaking one of our rules, I sat there enjoying the second rush of sugar on my palate. Of course, this didn’t stop us from eating our habitual tablespoon of peanut butter goodness later that evening.
At around three a.m., something wasn’t right. While I had been riding high on the wave of free sugar from earlier in the day, my bowels wouldn’t let me sleep. I wasn’t sure if it was the no-cheese pizza that I made for dinner, or just my system in shock, but either way, I was paying for it now. I was frightened that I had become sick, and I worried that there was no way I would be ready for work a few hours from now. I started to think that maybe this dollar thing wasn’t worth it.
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On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America Page 3