As the line inched forward, we thought of all the other ways that people spend their income. If one used the amount of purchasable food as the measure of its value, most things seemed monstrously overpriced. The designer coffee the woman in front of us sipped was three days’ worth of food. The New York Times under the arm of her date was another few day’s worth of sustenance. Put in these terms, my new phone was equal to nearly an entire year’s worth of food. Sure, it could use GPS to give me my location, and I could check my e-mail at any moment, but did I really need my phone to tell me that I was at the movie theater in Del Mar? While this comparison might not have been entirely fair, it gave us a lot to consider. The stark contrast between the privileges afforded to us and the dire situations of those living in the developing world was troubling. While we hadn’t started this project with any type of political agenda, the political implications that surfaced as a result of our experiences were becoming apparent.
Kerri and I often talked with others about those who have no choice but to live on a dollar a day. We listened to people as they told us that third-world poverty and eating on a dollar a day in the United States were not comparable; we wondered what they really meant, and how they knew this. Our questions about poverty were growing; questions about how a person could live on a dollar a day turned to questions about purchasing-power parity. Reflecting on the cost of canned tomatoes pushed me to wonder about the plight of the workers who harvested them. Our little project to see if we could eat for less was producing questions that seemed to unravel our understanding about how the world worked. Food seemed to be at the center of everything, and pulling at one strand forced us to consider things that we hadn’t anticipated thinking about.
Is it true that 26,000 children die from poverty every day? How many people entered the twenty-first century without the ability to read or sign their names? How many people live without electricity? Is it true that the wealthiest country on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor? Being at the movies, a night that was supposed to be a break from all of these thoughts, a time to relax and appreciate being together, had turned into a meditation on issues related to poverty. Of course, the most obvious realization was that if we were actually in a situation where we couldn’t afford to eat more than a dollar’s worth of food, we wouldn’t be at the movies. We took our tickets from the teenage girl behind the glass and I smiled at Kerri; my student discount had saved us a dollar, a whole day’s worth of food.
Once we stepped inside the theater, we watched as people lined up for snacks, the cost of which made them but a distant dream for us. The smell of movie theater popcorn has got to be one of the best food aromas on the planet, but tonight we wouldn’t be able to take part in this calorie-laden custom. My tiny dinner had left room in my stomach, and I longed for a box of Sour Patch Kids and a cherry cola to pacify me as the previews started. The sounds of patrons ripping into their candy bars and the soft swishing of ice in their gigantic cups of soda were nearly unbearable.
This ritual of snacking on sweets while entering into the fantasy of film is a powerful combination. Doctors often tell parents not to let their children sit in front of the television with a bowl of chips or any other snacks, as it encourages mindless eating and in turn plays a role in the development of bad eating habits and overweight kids. Apparently, my parents didn’t get the memo. I was a chubby kid in elementary school, and throughout high school some of my baby fat still clung to my face. I spent most of my youth playing baseball and running around outside; I rode my bike to school and I even played ice hockey as a teenager, but it was never enough to burn off the calories from what I ate.
My parents told me to eat everything on my plate, whether I liked it or not. Sitting at the dinner table, my father used to force me to eat Brussels sprouts, and the little green balls seemed to weigh fifty pounds as I lifted each one from my plate. I would save my milk so that I could flood my mouth to wash them down. Even today, Brussels sprouts seem enormous, and I have yet to eat one as an adult. I would have rather chowed down on Kraft mac and cheese and washed away the delicious residue with a 7UP, or ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut.
By the time I turned thirteen, that had become more common. My parents had divorced a year earlier, and family dinners were rare. My mother worked long hours and took classes at night, so convenience foods became the norm. I remember the nights when she would make pork chops and applesauce or meat loaf, but more frequent were the evenings of Campbell’s bean with bacon soup, or hot dogs with the little cheese bits inside. Fresh fruits and vegetables didn’t play even a supporting role. My sister and I were only at my dad’s house, where we ate a lot of pizza and had big breakfasts at a place called Paradise Grill, every other weekend.
At school, the food was no better. For lunch I would buy one of the large chocolate chip cookies and a soda. After school, I ate fast food with my friends. When my best friend got his license, it meant late nights at the Taco Bell drive-through, which was open twenty-four hours, and at the McDonald’s just up the street for twenty-nine-cent-cheeseburger night. Every Wednesday we would order ten burgers each and a whole tray of fries and eat until we couldn’t move. We knew it wasn’t the best food choice, but we had little idea how unhealthy it really was. My health teacher in high school was a large man who sat at the front of the class with a Super Big Gulp in one hand and one of those large microwave burritos in the other. He looked like a sweaty bear and did nothing to model what he was supposed to be teaching us (and this was at one of Newsweek’s “100 Best High Schools” in the nation). The result of having been raised on these food options is that I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. I have never been obese, but I have been consistently ten to twenty pounds overweight. I grew up with the habit of eating everything in front of me, most of which happened to be energy-dense foods laden with fat and coated with sugar. Physical activity was more an occasional thing than a way of life.
As an adult, I still fall victim to these foods every now and then, and while I have gotten better about exercising, if I am not diligent, my waistline will grow. Part of this is because I love sweets. Cookies, cupcakes, brownies, candy, and anything with chocolate are all temptations that I struggle to resist. Kerri’s mom knows this about me and indulges the habit when we visit them during the holidays. I can always count on a box of Cap’n Crunch on top of her fridge, and Double Stuf Oreos on the counter. As if loading up on sugar in the morning wasn’t bad enough, every time I walk through the kitchen, a cookie seems to land in my mouth, sometimes two.
During this experiment, we couldn’t afford such high-calorie treats. However, the batch of peanut butter cookies I baked as a peace offering for Kerri the week before, and the nightly tablespoons of peanut butter sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, were enough to keep me from having sugar withdrawals. As an adult, I take full responsibility for my dietary choices, but I also recognize that my formative years were shaped by the strategies of food marketing experts, omnipresent fast food, and my parents’ need for cheap and easy mealtime solutions. For the first time, I was doing my best to unlearn what I knew about eating, and I was working to unpack more than twenty years of food baggage.
By the time the weekend had started, Kerri was back to work getting our meals ready for the week. I cleaned around the house while she soaked beans, made soup, baked bread, and prepared wheat gluten cutlets for dinner. To the independent observer, it would have seemed that she had been doing this her entire life, as Kerri’s ability to multitask in the kitchen was beyond inspiring. Although she moved gracefully around the kitchen, I could tell that she was veering toward total exhaustion. I started to feel guilty for convincing her to go through with this. It had been my idea, and now I could see Kerri working hard in the kitchen and nearing the brink of burnout. I, too, was feeling less energetic, but overall I had grown accustomed to eating smaller-sized portions. I felt liberated from packaged and highly processed foods, and I was proud that we had actually made it that
far. In addition, while I knew that it was unhealthy for me to lose so much weight so quickly, I was secretly delighted that I might end this experiment looking better than when we started.
5
A Friend for Dinner
Kerri
By Tuesday of our last week, I felt miserable. All I wanted to do was collapse on the couch. I have never been one to call in sick. When I was younger, this was because I couldn’t afford a day off, but as a teacher, it’s a pain to call in. In past jobs, calling in sick wasn’t a big deal. Someone higher up called another employee in to work while I went back to bed. I didn’t have to think about anything. In teaching, it’s not that easy. As a group, most teachers don’t call in sick unless we are truly miserable. I am sure it isn’t that we are sick less frequently than people in other professions, but some days it feels like it takes less effort to come in sick than to make lesson plans for a substitute and make sure all materials are easy to access. However, it really is surprising that teachers are not sick more often. Imagine a hundred people coming through your workspace in a single day—coming in sick themselves, touching doorknobs, sneezing on desks, and coughing. A classroom is one big germ party.
On Monday I started to feel sick, and on Tuesday, work was miserable. I love my students, but during the course of a single day, I see more than one hundred of them, and they all need something. It can be overwhelming when I’m feeling fine, but when I’m ill, it’s difficult to cope with. I often tell my students that I am happy to answer their questions as long as they don’t swarm me; otherwise, after class they will surround my desk. I finished off the day on Tuesday, but I needed to stay late because I had made a decision. I would call in sick the next day. I needed extra time that evening to prepare for the sub.
I only had a sore throat and a headache, so I probably could have gone to school the next day and survived, but I didn’t want to put any more strain on my body than I already had. I was running out of energy and I felt exhausted. If I kept pushing forward, I might really get sick. With only one week to go, I wanted to make sure we survived without any major illnesses. That does not change the fact that whenever I miss a day, I feel guilty, as if I am somehow letting my students down. They probably don’t feel that way, but I worry about it. When I’m not in the classroom, it’s hard to rest because I’m concerned about what’s going on in my absence. Are they doing what they need to be doing? Is the sub following my lesson plans? But, in the end, sick days are supposed to be used when I need them, and I should be taking that time to recover instead of spreading my germs around.
I have an allotted number of sick days every year, so I wouldn’t be losing any pay for taking a day to recover. In my previous jobs, a loss of a day meant a loss of pay, and that is a reality for many people. They are then forced to make a choice that has several repercussions: going to work sick and not taking the time to get over the illness; risking making a small problem worse; spreading the infection to coworkers and customers. On the other hand, calling in sick might mean a loss of wages for one or more days; problems paying bills or being able to pay for a doctor’s visit; and, in the worst cases, even losing the job.
It was my turn to post on our blog that night, and I wrote about my ailments. It was important to let our readers know how we were faring, but if there was any way we could have blocked our parents from reading our blogs that last week, I am sure that we would have. I usually talk to my parents a couple of times a week, and both of them were concerned with our health. Whenever I spoke with my dad, one of his first questions was how were we feeling. He claimed that every time I spoke to him, I sounded tired or worn down.
“How’s everything going?”
“Fine, Dad. I just had a long day.”
“Oh, is that it? I thought you sounded a little tired. I can hear it in your voice. How much longer until you guys are finished?”
“A couple more days, don’t worry. I’m fine, really. How’s Mom?”
I tried to find a way to allay his fears as fast as I could and move on to other issues. Christopher’s mom was worse. Her concern became pervasive by the fourth week. Lynda is also a teacher, and as part of a nutrition unit that she was teaching, which happened to correspond with our project, her fifth-grade class was following our adventures. It seemed that her class was starting to be concerned about us, so she kept calling to pass that on. Their fears heightened her own, and rarely a day went by that we didn’t hear from her. Lynda meant well, and we knew she was just worried, but on more than one occasion she left us a long message on our answering machine, telling us it was time to stop the dollar project. She didn’t want us to continue, even though we only had a few days left. Each message she left was longer and sterner than the last. “Okay, you two, this has gone on long enough and you could get really sick. You need to stop this now. I’m serious.” It got to the point that when she called, we let the phone ring and turned the volume down while she left a message.
This is not to say that there was no validity to the concerns of our loved ones. I often tell my students that they need to eat breakfast and a healthy lunch in order to perform well. Trying to focus on an empty stomach severely impacts learning. Despite such admonishments to my students, however, we had ignored our own warnings and plunged into a monthlong “do as I say, not as I do” experiment. We learned quickly that hunger is time-consuming. When you’re hungry, it’s easier to pay attention to your growling gut than to whatever may be going on in class. Any full day of school or work is exhausting, even if you have plenty to eat. When you’re missing the calories or nutrients needed to make it through the day, the tasks ahead are even more daunting. If students are coming to school hungry, they are probably not getting the same thing out of the school day that a well-fed classmate is.
In addition to the impact on our work lives, the lack of variety caused unexpected effects. Eating a diet low in diversity posed problems for our taste buds, but also, more importantly, to our health. For the first day of our project we took vitamin supplements, but then we realized that purchasing vitamins was not within our daily budget. We talked about calculating the cost, but we didn’t want to sacrifice the extra few cents’ worth of food that supplementing our diet might have taken away from us. We were more concerned about full bellies than checking whether or not we met the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of nutrients every day. Whether or not this was nutritionally the right choice, we weren’t sure. However, it seemed more important to eat enough than to make sure we met the RDA.
Advertisements push for people to consume vitamin-enriched foods, rather than a wide enough variety of foods so that most nutrients can be acquired naturally. There is an abundance of enriched foods in grocery stores, and some of the nutrients that the items are enriched with are the same ones that were lost in the refining or processing of it. “Enriched” on a food label indicates that the nutrients were added back to the same level that was lost in the processing. “Fortified” means that the nutrients were added at a level higher than what the food originally contained. It is unclear what the benefits are of adding nutrients to processed foods, as opposed to eating a variety of foods with naturally occurring benefits. And while there are many foods that are enriched, they tend to be the ones that are less healthful to begin with. Walking down the cereal aisle of a grocery store, the message is clear. The boxes are labeled with “9 essential nutrients,” or “Now with calcium,” which can be misleading to consumers and translated into “healthy.” However, I strongly believe that eating a neon-colored artificially flavored fruit cereal will not have the same health benefits of a whole grain cereal with fresh fruit, even if the cereal is “enriched.”
The whole idea of enriching foods came around after World War I. Soldiers had been rejected from the military due to poor health, and it was understood that strong Americans would make a stronger America. Other attempts to get people to consume the RDA for nutrients didn’t include helping them to diversify their diet or to make nutritious food less exp
ensive, but instead enriching the foods people already ate with nutrients. This enriching of foods continues today, when even more foods are processed and in need of nutrients. Ambiguity and lack of government regulation give companies the upper hand in labeling products with health claims, even when such health claims may be misleading.
We had weren’t eating anything neon-colored, and what we ate wasn’t necessarily bad for us. Our issues came more from the fact that our dollar-a-day portions were too small for us to get the calories we needed to function, and our limited repertoire of dishes partnered with the meager amount of fruits and vegetables we could afford didn’t supply a wide range of nutrients. While we longed for something different, we still savored what little we had. It was hard to imagine eating less than we were, but on one night that week, we did.
We had promised a friend of ours, my coworker Dave, that we would have him over for dinner at some point during our project. Due to other commitments on both sides, the meal had been pushed back to this last week. In addition to teaching, Dave is also a freelance writer for a few local publications, and he wanted to write an article about what we were doing. We had known since the start of our project that Dave would be coming over for dinner one night, and on our twenty-fifth day, a Thursday, we finally were able to make it happen.
With the exception of a trip to the movies and our outing to a lecture at a university, during the dollar project Christopher and I had spent little time, outside of work, with other people. We tend to be homebodies, but we do occasionally make an effort to get out and see people. However, in the past month, our routine had turned into a never-ending cycle of eat, work, prepare food, eat, blog, bed. It was getting to be monotonous. We had never paid attention to how much of our social time revolved around food.
On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America Page 6