Hunger Fast: A reflection on the $4 per day food challenge
By Danielle Sundstrom, COEJL Program Fellow
I recently took the Hunger Fast challenge, where I committed to live on a food budget of four dollars per day. My first step was to try to live on whatever food I already had in my apartment for the rest of this week. That would mean stretching my $80 worth of groceries over three weeks, or $3.81 per day. With all of the canned food in my apartment, I didn’t expect to encounter much difficulty with stretching the food out until Friday, when I went home for Pesach.
By Wednesday, I already had to add extra food purchases to my $3.81 limit. Although I had initially purchased a good amount of fruits and veggies at the market, I quickly ran out. I try to eat at least two pieces of fruit and two types of vegetables in a normal day– when I’m not taking on Hunger Fast challenges. This goal is decidedly impossible to achieve on a less than $4 a day budget. One day I had to splurge on a banana (50 cents!). Another day I made it to $4.31 before eating any vegetables. Eating healthy on this budget was quite an ordeal.
The Hunger Fast challenge has helped me to understand the everyday challenges that families relying on food stamps, as well as the populations around the world experiencing food insecurity as the result of extreme weather conditions and climate change. While it is possible to survive on less than $4 a day, it is clear to me that there is no guarantee to obtain the government-recommended nutritional requirements, or to even eat three meals per day. I have only had a taste of the reality that the Hunger Fast challenge is trying to help the average consumer understand, and each day I found that I was anxious about how I’d be able to afford a nutritious meal.
Interested in getting involved? For more information about this year’s Hunger Fast, go to www.hungerfast.org.
