Submitted by Molly Shapiro (age 13)

After a week of taking on the “Food Stamp Challenge,” I have found that not eating as often or as much food as I do regularly, has granted me much more thinking time.

More thinking time was not necessarily a first choice for a 13-year old, food-focused New Yorker, but it did make me much more aware of how much gratitude I lack for small daily delights.

I went to D’Agostino’s (a grocery store) on Sunday night to choose my main staples for the week with the help of my dad (he did not participate in the Challenge). A trip to the grocery store, which was originally supposed to take ten minutes, ended up taking more than thirty minutes because it was so difficult to find affordable foods within my $31.50 budget.

The foods needed to get me through the week, while still leaving money for small foods throughout the course of a day. I began to see the price difference between brand name and generic cereals, peanut butters, breads, and more common foods. In all honesty, there IS a difference in crunchiness (a primary quality of a great cereal) between generic and name-brand Cheerios.
 
I decided upon the following to buy for the week:

• 
  Foodtown Peanut Butter…4.49
• 
  Stone Ground Whole Wheat Bread…3.59
• 
  Tuscan Dairy Farms 2% Milk…1.65
• 
  Foodtown Generic Cheerios…3.79

These items were supposed to be the staples to get me through the week, but none of them excited me in the least. I realized that so much of what I look forward to on a daily basis are the variety of meals and snacks. So many social gatherings after school or family conversations revolve around food.

I woke up on Monday morning, completely dreading the whole week, because I could not look forward to a brownie after school (the challenge also made me aware of my bad eating habits, which include way too much dessert,) or Tropicana orange juice in the morning.

I lost so much energy without those small luxuries, which I had never paid close attention to. I began to understand that it is not just the eating of food that fuels us, but the planning, preparing, and talking about food as well.

I began the week by sneaking a PB&J into my school (peanut butter was not allowed—but it was the only sandwich ingredient I could afford!) so that I could eat it quickly while my grade was in the cafeteria for lunch.

I then had an apple for lunch on Tuesday, but was not filled at all.

On Wednesday, I figured out that kids on food stamps had lunch at school for free, so I did that for the rest of the week. I found myself looking forward to lunches at school, which I’d previously hated. I was suddenly conscious of how spoiled I was when it came to having such an abundance of food at school.

As I go into the coming week, I am going to try to be more aware of how fortunate I am to have every bite of snack I eat after school, or for every meal of the day. I would also like to highlight the fact that every day is a challenge for those on food stamps, and it was not just a game for me to try for a week and be done with. I feel great admiration for the people who manage to get themselves through each week with such a small amount to spend and even feed an entire family. I hope that as individuals and as a synagogue, we make ourselves aware of how fortunate we are, and how necessary it is to help those are less privileged, in any way we can manage.

Read more clergy and congregant posts about this challenge