Actress and “grandstanding limousine liberal” Gwyneth Paltrow’s promise to live on a food stamp budget for a week managed to secure her quite a bit of news coverage Saturday. Media outlets ranging from the New York Daily News to the Daily Mail to the Huffington Post to the Tech Times detailed her challenge to live on a food budget of $29 a week.
As usual with such challenges, the fact that the “S” stands for “supplemental” was lost entirely, with many families receiving WIC benefits. Even so, is Paltrow’s budget of $29 — “what families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week” — correct? When Senator (then-Mayor) Cory Booker took the SNAP challenge as a single man, he was given a weekly budget of $35. FreedomWorks’ Kristina Ribali, on the other hand, estimated that a family of four would receive an average of $126 for food expenses.
Have a click through and see if you don’t calculate quite a bit more than Paltrow’s $29.
Close enough: better put back a sprig of fresh parsley and maybe the clove of garlic.
Paltrow really might want to consider checking out Kristina Ribali’s demonstration of the SNAP challenge done right.
Once more, for laughs:
