Eating Poor Without Eating Poorly

Ed Schultz at MSNBC has decided to label Sean Hannity The Most Out Of Touch Man In America.  The reason is Sean can't understand why there are Americans going to bed hungry in a land with so much opportunity and abundance.  A caller said it was impossible to have a healthy diet on food stamps.  Sean thinks you can eat a healthy diet with little money and with food stamps you can eat quite well.  That has the left in a frenzy.  Problem is he's right.

First off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps, was meant to supplement a diet not constitute the entire food budget.  Also according to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association eating healthier is actually cheaper.  Under the food stamp president 44.7 million people, up 33% since he took office, were on food stamps last year.  If you are poor you are on food stamps or else you're mentally challenged or homeless.  If you have kids they qualify for free school lunches five days a week in the summer and during school they get breakfast too.  (My wife is a teacher and she says at her school the kids have to get a breakfast tray even if they ate breakfast at home, taxpayer money is going strait to the trash.)  If your kids go to bed hungry you are a negligent parent.

The Blogmacracy has a thread on the new assault on family farms and ranches by Obama's Department of Labor. Once the family farm is gone they can hammer agriculture like they do every other big business; drug companies, oil, coal, etc. Don’t forget meat production, especially cattle farts, causes global warming climate change. Food prices are already rising, it will only get worse. This will be extremely destabilizing globally, the Arab spring grew out of food riots.  As food prices rise so will the number of people dependent on food stamps and so will the amount given to families.  All Americans will need to learn how to eat cheap. 

Even if you are feeding a family of four entirely on food stamps it can easily be done.  Here some chefs have a menu that is heavy on meat, usually the priciest item on the menu, that will accomplish that goal.  Replace the meat with vegetable protein and you can save even more.  Hannity mentioned a rice and bean diet that a buddy of his ate that provided a good chunk of the nutrients he needed.  We used to live off beans on the ranch, we would cook a big pot and refrigerate or freeze what we didn't eat and have food for a week.  Americans have been living on squash, corn and beans for 10.000 years.  The beans are planted between the corn stalks and provide nitrogen, squash is planted between the rows to control weeds.  Vegetables are the easiest things in the world to grow and can provide almost every nutrient needed.  You don't need a whole lot of ground to plant either, one tomato plant in a pot can provide more than you can eat.  Even a small backyard garden can provide an abundance of food.  Get on the internet, if you don't have a computer most libraries do, and you can find tons of info on how to eat cheap.  And I haven't even mentioned Ramen Noodles.