Really the “snack aisle” should be the produce section. Apples, bananas, pears.
I’m not telling anyone what to eat, just offering suggestions for healthy eating.
Plus, also as Justin mentioned, the assumption is that the household will pay 30% themselves. So that’s another $1.35 a day on top of that $4.50 for $5.85 a day or nearly $41 a week per person.
Also as Marc alluded to, you can get store brands for even cheaper. I even like the Stop & Shop brand of breakfast cereal for just $1 a box.
Even bigger savings can be had at both Dollar Tree and Ocean State Job Lot for pantry items. Those are even cheaper than the “big chain” and the “local supermarkets”.

True story here, when I went to grad school, I got off the plane and went right to the neighborhood credit union. I took out a loan for the full amount of school and for whatever reason, didn’t borrow more for rent and food. So then I had to figure out how to pay the rent and buy food. What better way than to work in the food industry where you get subsidized meals. I made pizzas for Pizza Hut. Quite often, I made barely enough to pay the rent, so often, meals were a single baked potato or a 10 cent packet of ramen noodles. You quickly learn how to get rid of hunger by filling your stomach with water. I lost about 30 lbs that year.
I’m not advocating that for anyone and clearly it’s not even sustainable. The point is you do what you have to do and make it into a temporary solution. You do things that make sense, like getting a job in the food industry so then even if you still have to pay for meals, they’re less expensive and you have options for a slightly more healthy meal.
Granted, the stories are anecdotal and maybe quite often only slightly more than “one-offs” but it is/was frustrating to hear of people buying Subway and $7 steak and bottles of Coke on food assistance while literally starving on ramen with the understanding that I put myself in that situation and I’d live with the consequences.

I worked at a Quiznos during my freshman year of college. More free food than I knew what to do with. Every night I left with 1-2 unclaimed sandwiches and a huge container of broccoli and cheddar soup. All the free drinks you wanted, all day long.
They are hiring.

Russ, God Bless you for the work you do at Amos House.

Of course $31.50 per child per week is enough to feed a child, provided that the person knows how to buy, cook and keep food. That’s a big “provided” in the world of the entitled. Unfortunately we are supporting the Nth generation of people who don’t know anything but fast foods (Subway, MacDonalds), prepared foods (rotisserie chicken from Stop & Shop), junk food (soda, chips) and probably the only chance they have at a somewhat balanced meal, free school lunch & breakfast.
Check out the “Occupy Providence” page on facebook and see what kinds of food they are begging for (soy milk/almond milk/rice milk and other Whole Foods/Yuppie goodies) – not to mention my favoirite – volunteering of an EBT card to buy water for the campers.

Make no mistake about it – Russ’s angle here is to keep them dumb, dependent and voting Democrat. It’s a truly cynical 3D vision of these “progressive’s”. (I guess they want to be called that now since “liberals” have gotten such a nasty reputation, them being so stupid and all) Hey, who can argue that it hasn’t been working. Just remember, don’t listen to what they say.

Shame on you,Russ. Shame on you!

I believe in putting up your money where your mouth is. Some commenters here think $32 a week is easy. So take the challenge. I know the challenge in its own right is what have you peeved. But what better way than taking on this liberal challenge, do conservatives get to prove their ideological point. I would suggest an AR event with people signing up to challenge the wooly headed liberals. Now don’t do this challenge for a week. Why not do it for the remaining weeks of 2011? One would really show some budgeting discipline week to week and not just count on stored foods.

Simple Fact: Nobody in America is starving. The data show that even in ‘food insecure’ homes, the problem manifests itself as a parent occasionally skipping a meal. Even the staggering number of ‘food insecure’ homes is based on a *single skipped meal in a year*.
Our poor are more likely to be obese than our middle class. Our problem isn’t that people don’t have access to food. SNAP and WIC do a good job as-is.
I like to find actual ‘problems’ and then find ways to ‘fix’ them; I don’t have an agenda. Since the ‘problem’ is no longer ‘hunger’, but ‘obesity’ and ‘malnutrition’, it’s time to start controlling what foods recipients can buy with the subsidy and improve school lunches.

@mangeek:
If the EBT cards produce the same behavior in some as does credit and debit cards, is there any wonder that the problem is obesity and malnutrition and not hunger. I know food stamps had their own set of problems but apparently EBT wasn’t the panacea to fix them.

Any econ101 student knows (or at least should know) that these subsidies and benefits are all fungible. It’s all just a more palatable smokescreen to make it impossible to figure out who is actually paying how much for whom. $200 extra a month towards food or other regular expenses means that there is $200 extra freed up to spend on cigarettes, iphones, or what have you. Or if the individual had literally no preexisting budget, there are hundreds of ways to convert designated benefits into quick cash.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – if people received a lump sum tax bill for government every month, an extra 30% of the population would turn libertarian overnight (and not the “left” kind).

Thanks for the comments folks. After reading them, I know once again that I am living in the belly of the beast.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
and OldTimeLefty

and beer.

It may be politically incorrect to say it, but the fact itself is undeniable – Americans don’t starve. I walk by at least 5 homeless people on my way to work every day in DC. Most of them are overweight and have food wrappers scattered around whatever grate or public park bench they have taken as their spot. Some are mentally ill, some are addicted, some are clearly just lazy and do nothing all day, every day. The progressive “solution” of giving them more money does nothing but accelerate their demise.
Although I am not religous, I am a member of a religous institution through my family and for social reasons. I tell you there is no way they would turn away any of these people if they genuinely came and asked for help turning their life around. They don’t want help – not really.

“Go look the homeless people in the eyes in DC, Detroit, Chicago, or even Providence”
The chronically homeless who won’t go to the shelters that have rooms available?! I’m sorry, I should amend my previous statement:
“Less Simple Fact: Nobody in America is starving for lack of access to food. If they are it’s because they are not seeking food or fraudulently transferring their food benefits.”
I do see homeless people every day, Mr. Paris. There are a few folks who hang out in the park right next to my work. They’re thin and gaunt, but they each drink at least $30/day in alcohol from what I can tell by the piles of bottles. Are they ‘starving’? They can walk to Crossroads and get food, it’s only a few blocks away. They could also drink less and have a bigger food budget than I do.
My girlfriend works in Central Falls with the indigent. Her clients are disabled and formerly homeless. The only time they go without food is when they blow their whole monthly SNAP/SSDI benefits on frivolous stuff, then my GF has to bail them out using petty cash. These folks aren’t starving either, they just have a new boyfriend and went over their allotted number of texts in their data plan, and they’ve prioritized their cell phone over food.
The progressive idea is that if you help someone, that’s all they’ll need to get on their feet. In reality, we keep building better idiots. I’m not saying we should cut the programs, I want reforms to actually HELP people, some of which even involve spending more.

@Dan: All the homeless people in the K-street region (or downtown, or most business areas) have already been fed twice that day, no doubt. But to say that there are NO starving people in America? Have you ever worked at a soup kitchen? There’s one near GWU, and I’ve certainly seen extremely hungry if not starving people show up there. I don’t understand how people can just say “This is fact.” without providing any information outside of personal experience. So I’ll add a little reference material: “In 2010, ~6.7 million households, or 5.4 percent of all U.S. households, had very low food security (compared with 4.7 million households (4.1 percent) in 2007. In households with very low food security, the food intake of some household members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because of the household’s food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v., USDA 2008, p. iii.) The United States changed the name of its definitions in 2006 that eliminated references to hunger, keeping various categories of food insecurity. This did not represent a change in what was measured. Very low food insecurity (described as food insecurity with hunger prior to 2006) means that, at times during the year, the food intake of household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money and other resources for food. This means that people were hungry ( in the sense of “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food” [Oxford English Dictionary 1971] for days each year (USDA Wesbite, 2006).” That’s from the USDA… not exactly a liberal think-tank. They even stopped using the word “hunger” under the Bush Administration and replaced it with “food insecurity”. But does that make it less true? Oh and as an aside, I never give money… Read more »

So 1 of 19 -households- have a -member- who -misses a meal- over a period of a -year-, and that’s a national hunger problem?
I’ve been without food for the whole house for two day stretches before. I’ve had to subsist on candy pilfered from jars on coworkers’ desks after hours. Really.
The definitions are bent… If 1/19 households have a member who experiences a skipped meal in a year, that’s not a big enough problem to warrant further mention. We’re at or past the point of diminishing returns on our investment in food for the poor. Why don’t they add some definitions so we can find out how many homes experience chronic skipped meals, and then cross-reference that with other societal problems to see if we can ‘fix hunger’ through other programs (like addiction treatment, or fuel subsidies, vehicle repair vouchers, etc.).

I don’t know if Russ is a “gentrifier,” nor do I have any problem with the conduct if he is. What we do know is that his progressive policies are precisely what has made so many people needy and dependent in Rhode Island in the first place. And they will stay that way for all time until every faux progressive “expert” like Russ is swept into the dustbin of history and every corrupt, enabling politician that people like Russ support is voted out of power.

“My point isn’t to denigrate those who rely upon food stamps to eat…”
Funny because it seems that’s exactly what most folks here took away from your post. That doesn’t bother you?

Russ-foreclosure?WTF are you talking about?
I said something very simple-when upwardly mobile younger people start buying into marginal neighborhoods and renovating and bringing in galleries and boutiques and oh so cute cafes,the people who were there get priced out of their apartments by rising rents-I have seen it happen in a lot of places,and guess what?
They have no place they can afford to go.
You sow a lot of seeds of bitterness that way while you think of yourself as some kind of “progressive”.
Amos House winds up with some more clients.
Maybe it’s not convoluted enough for you to understand.