you are what you eat?

Every March , our church does a food collection for their food shelf.  I usually just grab a case of peanut butter or mac'n'cheese or diapers to contribute.  This year, I had just watched the documentary A Place at the Table so I decided to put a little more thought into it. (As a side note, the documentary was thought-provoking, but it did not particularly convince me that our nation is "underfed" or that it is fully the government's problem.)  Anyway, I decided I would base our contribution on what it would take to feed our family of five for a week.  I considered making a menu for the week and buying exactly double of everything and requiring my family to follow the menu for a week.  After some thought, I couldn't commit to eating out of cans and boxes for a week.  I wouldn't say we have the healthiest menus, but we do eat a lot of fresh produce, and I make many of our meals "from scratch". Instead, I went ahead and came up with a menu for my "food shelf family of five" for the week and simultaneously shopped for my family for a typical week (without a menu, because I'm usually not that organized!)

 

I assumed the children from my food shelf family would eat breakfast and lunch at school, so I came up with family dinners, plus oatmeal for weekend breakfast and granola bars and raisins for a few (but probably not nearly enough) snacks.  I totally forgot about getting anything to drink for my food shelf family and I also didn't think about the adult(s) needing to eat breakfasts and lunches.

 

Here were the meals I purchased for:

 

Spaghetti with meat sauce, mushrooms, can of veggies, can of fruit.

Chicken chili (3 cans), can of veggies, can of fruit, crackers

Tuna casserole (2 cans tuna, noodles, can of cr. of chicken soup, can of veggies), can of fruit

Chicken and rice (Can of chicken, rice, onion soup mix, can of cr. of chicken), can of veggies, applesauce

Chunky Beef and Veggie Soup (3 cans), can of fruit, crackers

"Ham" (Spam) and Scalloped potatoes, can of veggies, can of fruit

Chicken and Stuffing (can of chicken, can of cream of chicken, can of veggies, box of stuffing), applesauce.

 

That's 7 meals, so they are stuck eating leftovers or plain rice or noodles for two more weekend meals.  I also put in a box of Kleenex, because it was on our list. 

 

I did my shopping at Aldi's, where I do much of our family's shopping.  I didn't pay attention to prices or what I was spending until I got home and broke down the receipt. Here is what I purchased for our food shelf family.  When I look at it, I know my kids would "think" they were starving if this was all we had to eat for a week, and it really doesn't look like enough, because we eat more than one meal a day! 

 

Food Shelf Family: $40.46

By comparison, here is what I bought for our family:

Our Family: $73.24

It is easy to see, as in a typical week, most of my shopping happens around the outside parameter of the store (fresh produce - $22.92; dairy - $22.71)  I also bought a few staples we were out of - miracle whip, canned mushrooms, brownie and cake mixes, etc, and some Easter candy.  I spent $4.47 on bread and $0 on meat ($6.27 was spent on canned meat for the food shelf family.)  That's not because we don't eat meat - it's because we buy most of our meat direct from a farmer and it costs way more than 6 bucks a week.  I am also sure that I will end up buying more groceries throughout the week.  However, some of the groceries I purchased for our family will be for kids' breakfasts and lunches (because I think I pack a healthier lunch than what is offered by the school aka gov't).

I would be interested to see a breakdown of the nutritional value of the foods I bought our food shelf family and our family.  My takeaway from this exercise is I am very thankful that we have more than $40 a week to spend on food, and that we are not limited to what is offered at a food shelf.  I hope our food shelf family has a way to get some milk, butter, bread, and bananas! (Lydia eats at least 2 bananas a day!)