I must say, we've become pretty good at shopping on a small weekly budget. We scored a few good deals again this week at Aldi with 99 cent peppers and strawberries! As I've said before, we will definitely be adding a trip to Aldi into our "usual" grocery store runs.
It would be a lie to say that this project was easy all along, but I do think we learned a lot along the way:
1. Access to good, affordable food is not nearly as accessible as it appears to middle class folks (I think we knew this, but this experiment made it very real).
2. A food stamp budget makes it nearly impossible to buy fresh produce on a regular basis. When it comes to being full or being healthy, being full always wins.
3. We get ripped off at the grocery store when we are too tied to brand name products.
4. Alabama taxes groceries WAY too heavily.
5. We waste a lot of the food we buy (when you only have a select amount of food in the pantry, you are more likely to actually eat it rather than let your "options" sit for so long they go bad).
6. We should all be working toward better access and affordability because ALL people deserve to be able to eat well (esp. when living in a wealthy country like ours).
Katie I enjoyed really reading about your "project". As as social worker at a county hospital we see how important it is for our patients to eat health and many of the patients I work with rely on food stamps. Hope that you and your family are doing wonderful!
ReplyDelete-Jennifer Hamrick