On Sunday, November 15, my group decided to do the Food Stamp Challenge. The Food Stamp challenge is a challenge where each person gets either two dollars a meal, or thirty dollars a week for all of their food. They then have to live off that much money for the week, or month, depending on how long they do the challenge. While Alice decided to buy each meal at a time, seeing what she could get for two dollars a meal, me and Stella bought all of our food at the beginning and cook it throughout the week. We used sixty dollars (our two thirty dollars combined), and split the food up at the end so we each got an even amount.

We are four days into the challenge so far, and I’ve been eating a lot of the same things every night at dinner. We get free lunch because of school, but we have to make our breakfast and dinner. I’ve been eating a lot of rice and pasta for dinner, because it’s easy to prepare and can last me more than one day, and cereal for breakfast every morning. So far, the challenge hasn’t been especially hard, but its hard getting used to not being able to buy snacks and food after school or eating whenever I’m hungry.

I haven’t been that hungry throughout the week, but the lack of food has made me exhausted. Every morning, I’ve found its harder to get out of bed, even if I go to bed at a reasonable time the night before. Because I have almost no breakfast, I find I want more to eat at lunch, and then more at dinner if I don’t have much lunch. Then I find myself eating a lot at dinner, when I have to save my food.

I think that I will have extra food after the project is over, because I’ve been eating a lot of the same thing every night. Some of the food has lasted a lot longer and taken up more meals than I thought it would, so I have more food that I thought I did. I will remember that, although thirty dollars can buy more food than I originally thought, it is still extremely hard to function on it. I can’t imagine living on food stamps for my entire life, or supplying for more than one person. I’ve learned that living on food stamps not only affects what you eat, it also affects how you go about doing day-to-day tasks.