Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Try feeding a family of six on $235

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Try feeding a family of six on $235
  • Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:26:04 -0600


too bad people have forgotten how to garden, it used to be make do or do
without .......
paul, tradingpost@gilanet.com

---------------
Try feeding a family of six on $235
By Susan Harrison Wolffis The Muskegon Chronicle, April 27, 2004
http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-4/108307891569560.xml

In March, Shawn Doctor fed her family of six on $235 worth of food stamps --
for
the entire month. "By the end there, we were having a hard time," she says.
"We didn't have a lot
of food in the house, nothing extra." April was only a little bit better.

Her husband, Barney Doctor, who was laid off from his factory job in January,
picked up some temporary work through Manpower, bringing in a week's worth of
wages.

But most of that went to pay overdue bills, not stock the cupboards. "We've
given up what we used to buy," Shawn Doctor says. "We only buy what we can
afford."

The Doctors have never been flush with money during their six-year marriage.
The most Barney Doctor, 38, has earned is $9 an hour. "He wasn't making a lot
of money, but we got by," says 29-year-old Shawn Doctor.

The family has one car, rents a modest home in the Oakview Elementary School
neighborhood, indulges only in the most basic cable TV package, camps in a
tent
during the summer with her parents.

But there is a crowd around the dinner table: Scott, 9, Shawn Doctor's son
from
a first marriage, whom Barney Doctor recently adopted; Elizabeth, 4; Jakob, 3;
Stephanie, 17 months; a baby due in July; and, of course, Shawn and Barney.

Making sure they are fed, and fed well, falls on Shawn Doctor's shoulders.

Last year, she enrolled in the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program
(EFNEP, for short) through MSU Cooperative Extension-Muskegon County to help
her
learn how to shop, budget and cook on a limited income.

"People should try (shopping) on what these families are trying to budget
with,"
says Diane Vermilyea, nutrition project manager at Muskegon County's
Cooperative
Extension.

Add to that the "stress," as Shawn Doctor describes it, of making sure the
food
bought is good for her family.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are often more expensive than processed foods,
which
are high in fat and sugar -- components that only add to people's poor health.

Although obesity is not a problem for the Doctor family, Shawn Doctor worries
about serving her children and husband balanced meals now so they will be
healthy in the future. She cooks soups and chilis from scratch because they're
lower in fat and salt than canned versions. She buys one package of apples,
another of oranges at the beginning of the month, for the kids. When they're
gone, she switches to generic brand canned fruits and vegetables.

She buys one bag of potato chips "because the kids love them, but when they're
gone," she says, "they're gone. They're too expensive."

"Healthier foods cost more," says Ken Kraus, director of the Muskegon County
Health Department. "It baffles me why, but processed foods are much cheaper.

"It's cheaper to buy cookies than it is oranges, and there's always hot dogs
on
sale where you get two for the price of one," Kraus says. "Food stamps aren't
based on how much healthy foods costs."

With processed foods rich in sugar and fat becoming cheaper than fruits and
vegetables, the poor in particular are paying a high price with obesity rates
shooting up in Muskegon County and across the country.

And with obesity comes a laundry list of health problems, such as diabetes and
high blood pressure.

Although being overweight is usually associated with eating too much rather
than
with hunger, a growing body of research shows that the people who have gained
the most weight in the last decade tend to have the lowest incomes, and often
go
without the kind of food or the amount they need.

People with limited incomes simply can't afford a totally healthy diet, says
Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who also
heads a center for public nutrition.

"These people are obese, frankly, because they have no money ... The message
has
been to blame people -- 'you're not choosing well, you're not educated
enough.'
We forget there are people whose choices are severely limited by finances and
time allocation," he said in an Associated Press interview.

Vermilyea says the population-at-large forgets that so many people with
limited
incomes face poor or no transportation to grocery stores.

"Is it safe to send your 12-year-old to the corner store in your neighborhood
to
get a gallon of milk ... if there is a corner store?" she says.

"Or what if only the burners work on your stove, and not the oven, which
happens
a lot to renters? Or if you can't count on the refrigerator to work? What kind
of meals are you going to make?"

In the summer, Cooperative Extension's nutrition programs give their clients
Project Fresh coupons worth $20 of produce at the Muskegon Farmer's Market.

"That's one thing that really helps. My kids love that," Shawn Doctor says.
"It
makes me feel better, too."

She's lucky, she says, because she has family she can turn to for help when
her
shelves are empty. Others in her shoes aren't as lucky, people who are forced
to
eat at soup kitchens or turn to food pantries in emergencies.

"Sometimes it's a challenge just getting food," Vermilyea says.

Kraus, who sees the devastating impact poverty has on the county's general
health, acknowledges that buying healthy food is not always the priority for
those with limited incomes.

"Man, they're struggling to make sure the heat, lights and water are on," he
says. "As long as they can get (their kids') bellies full, that's what's going
to matter.

"The question is a matter of what's the immediate basic need."






  • [Livingontheland] Try feeding a family of six on $235, Tradingpost, 04/27/2004

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page