There’s a paradoxical tension between rising public interest in healthy, organic, local food and rising rates of obesity-related illness in the US. To put it simply (and perhaps to oversimplify), there’s not a lot of overlap between populations that eat healthy, organic, local food, and those most afflicted by obesity and its consequences, because it’s hard to be in the former category when you live on dollars a day. Nutritional value and cost usually have an inverse relationship, the outcome of which is quite obvious. And although there’s a growing number of farmer’s markets that accept EBT cards, most food stamp recipients purchase cheap food in big grocery stores. Rebecca Blood has been thinking about this, and she decided to undertake a one-month challenge with her husband, during which they would buy food strictly within the USDA’s food stamp budget. But it doesn’t stop there — that challenge was recently completed by the governor of Oregon — they planned to eat according to the same food standards they normally keep. Their eating habits fairly well match those of the first population mentioned above, so this is where the real challenge lies. They would keep their CSA box coming, continue shopping… (more)
(Posted by Sarah Rich in Food and Farming at 2:05 PM)