The USDA offers what they call a Thrifty Food Plan which is a guide to feeding a family of four on food stamps. They studied this in 2000 in Washington, DC by attempting to purchase their recommended foods at urban supermarkets.

This report, compiled in May of 2001 details the shopping order and the results of their urban foraging. A few factoids from this:

• Eight items were hard to find in urban markets. In order, starting with the hardest: ground pork, fudgesicles, yolk-free egg noodles, breadcrumbs, cottage cheese (!?), bagels, garbanzo beans, chocolate chips.
• During the time studied, the TFP cost was an average of $101.70 for a family of four
• The TFP market basket costs almost the same in high poverty areas ($98.26) and low poverty areas ($98.92)
• Meats and meat alternatives take the largest share of the TFP dollars at $25.98. Following a distant second is frozen fruits and vegetables at $14.70. Based on our experience so far, I’d guess that dairy has outpaced frozen vegetables by now. In 2000, dairy was at $10.40.

Here’s what was used up in the second week of the two-week TFP meals. You will note that it is impossible to purchase food in these amounts, so they are clearly going by unit costs, not the grocery bill total.

All of the information that went into this study cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. The menus were formulated at great expense, and brochures are given out to folks on food stamps, yet the congressmen trying to live on $21 a week took advantage of none of this. The only one that seems to have even taken a crack at eating a balanced diet is Congressman Jim McGovern and wife Lisa. The right way to do this would have been to go to the USDA and get the shopping lists, recipes and meal plans that they offer for free to anyone who asks.

Here are the recipes that match up to the TFP shopping lists. Reading the recipes, the food sounds a lot better than it looks on their meal plan. “Pizza meatloaf” sounds gross, but the recipe sounds perfectly reasonable. It’s a meatloaf that uses spaghetti sauce in place of catsup and adds some mozzerella cheese to the meat.

I find their effort hard to take seriously, and we will be setting out to prove them wrong starting today. I really don’t have any doubts we can get enough food on $1 per meal per person. I do have to cook everything, but if my only income were from the government or even if I were working part time, I would certainly be able to do this. I do work now and I can do it. If I were commuting, I’d do more cooking today and I would probably plan that more lunches be from leftovers.