Chris Murphy dropped six pounds in four days — trying to experience how his poorest constituents eat, while also trying to avoid eating junk.
Murphy, a freshman Democratic U.S. senator from Connecticut, is finishing a five-day experiment Friday: eating on $4.80 a day, the average amount Connecticut food-stamp recipients receive. When he weighed himself upon his return home to the state Friday, the six-foot-one senator discovered his weight had dropped from 190 to 184 pounds since Monday. Friday morning, he discussed his experience with a panel of local food-pantry folks from Greater New Haven.
Murphy has been checking in with the Independent throughout the week to detail his experience. Following is an edited and condensed version of his responses to questions about his frame of mind as of mid-Friday.
The kind of peanut butter we buy for our kids is way outside the range that people can afford on a food-stamp budget. We give our kids organic natural peanut butter, which can be $8 a jar. I needed to find something that was more along the lines of $2 a jar. So when I got off the plane last night at 8:30, I went to the Stop & Shop in Cheshire and found a jar of peanut butter for about $2.50. I just finished off the peanut-butter sandwich [for lunch]. …
I weighed myself for the first time this morning. I was at 190. When I weighed myself this morning I was 184. I lost six pounds in four days. Which either speaks to the amount of food I was eating on the food stamp budget — or how much I was eating before. My weight was pretty stable before.
I was certainly trying to eat more healthy [than simply maximizing calories this week]. I was having chicken and rice and pasta and sauce and bananas when I could. I was generally trying to stay away from food that was just about the calories. …
We talked about that this morning [at the local food-pantry panel discussion]. We talked about the food insecurity obesity paradox. There are a lot of kids who experience the opposite: Because their parents are just focused on calories, obesity can be tied into the food insecurity problem. Families are so calorie-conscious that they’re ultimately substituting nutrients with calories. Kids on food stamps can be obese because the nutritional benefits don’t allow you to buy healthy food.
A lot of what we talked about as a panel today was that food programs are a short-term solution. Ultimately we’re dealing with a consequence of poverty. It was an important way for me to cap off the week. The panelists reminded me that as important as it is to fund nutrition programs, ultimately our goal has to be to get these people employed or in jobs that pay enough [to afford nutritious food]. …
[We also talked about] the bureaucracy involved in signing people up for [food stamps]; 30 percent of applications are denied. DSS [that state Department of Social Services] is taking far too long to process these claims. The application is 12 pages long. Somebody said on the panel today: There’s a one-page application to own a gun. There’s a 12-page application to get nutrition benefits. That’s an interesting juxtaposition. …
There are a thousand issues to care about when you’re in the United States Senate. Your job is in part picking the ones that you’re going to spend time working on. I certainly am going to spend more time advocating for robust nutritional funding at the federal level after this week, probably at a greater volume than I did beforehand. This is something I’m going to care about more, having lived for just a short five days in the shoes that most people walk for a much longer period of time.
I am not claiming to have truly learned what it’s like to be poor just because I lived on food stamps for a week. I still knew I was going to be able to eat a full day’s worth of meals on Saturday and Sunday. I do think it’s important that it has prompted a little bit of discussion in Washington and Connecticut. …
As told to Paul Bass.
Previous installments:
• Food-Stamp Senator Saves For House-Brand Rigatoni
• Noodles Again For Senator On Food-Stamp Diet
• Bagel Rescues Senator On Food Stamps
Again, someone needs to enlighten Mr. Murphy about the realities of life on EBT. Most people on EBT do not shop at Stop & Shop, let alone the one in Cheshire. They shop at Shop-Rite, Xpect Discounts, Wal-Mart, for their groceries.
EBT does not stretch that far at Stop & Shop. The reason so many people in New Haven use EBT at Stop & Shop is because it's the only grocery store we have downtown that's not Elm City Market (which is basically a Whole Foods).