Food Stamp Challenge

The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)—better known as Food Stamps—provides a single adult with $31.50 per week in purchasing power. But what does that actually buy?

Taking the Food Stamp Challenge means feeding oneself for a week on only the groceries a week's allotment of food stamps can buy. For a single adult, that adds up to all of $31.50 for the week. Making a concerted effort to shop carefully, and choose which purchases to make where, Normon Solomon spent nearly half of that total on a few basics and some produce—enough, he says, for about three days of meals. His first stop was at the Lucky's supermarket near downtown Petaluma.

Food stamps are a very visible, often maligned form of public assistance, but Solomon says just about everyone benefits from other, less obvious governmental supports.

Norman Solomon