Dear Gwyneth, this is what living on food stamps really looks like

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/gwyneth-paltrow-food-banks-snap

Version 0 of 1.

Gwyneth Paltrow is doing the food stamp challenge. The actor is trying to survive on $29 worth of food for a week.

Announcing her intentions last Thursday on Twitter, Paltrow posted the photo below:

This is what $29 gets you at the grocery store—what families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week. pic.twitter.com/OZMPA3nxij

As she put it, she is walking in a low-income American’s shoes. But is she really?

“Looking at what she bought and put on the web is something that would be … not completely realistic for a Snap recipient,” Kathy Green, the senior director of advocacy and public policy at Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, told the Guardian.

In light of Paltrow’s ambitions, the Guardian asked Green to give us a realistic take on what living on food stamps is actually like.

Not really just $29 a week

Green said that most Snap recipients do have more than just $29 a week for food.

“For a lot of our clients, that Snap allotment is not all they have for food. A lot of them are working, so they have an income and they come to our food pantry. In the majority of cases, they are piecing together different vehicles for food,” she said, adding that there is a minority of Americans who rely exclusively on food stamps for their food.

In 2013, those Americans accounted for 22% of Snap’s 47 million recipients. According to the US Department of Agriculture, these are the recipients who had zero gross income.

Too green

“I don’t know if what she bought is very representative of what they would normally buy,” Green said.

It’s not that Snap recipients don’t want to buy fresh produce and eat healthily. The problem is that they can’t afford to. At the beginning of the month, when the Snap recipients get their benefits, they are more likely to buy healthy food, “but as the month goes on and their benefits start depleting, they start to buy more processed food,” explained Green.

“Produce is wonderful, but in comparison to what they can get for their dollar, a lot of them turn to more shelf-stable processed food. A lot of times it’s processed food like ramen noodles, rice mixes, cereal – things like that that they know is going to fill them and their families up, and is going to be less expensive and is going to last longer.”

Fresh produce is one of the foods that low-income families try to get at a food pantry instead with their benefits.

“People on Snap are very judicious in terms of how they spend their benefits,” said Green.

But Paltrow did get one thing right – rice and beans are two of the products that many low-income Americans turn to.

Gwyneth Paltrow, meet the dollar store

Many Snap recipients don’t shop at traditional grocery stores. One reason is price.

“More and more and more of our clients are shopping at dollar stores, because they can get more for their Snap benefits,” Green told the Guardian. The other reason is that many of the stores like Dollar Tree and Dollar General are located within the low-income communities, which means that the Snap recipients can walk there and back, and don’t have to worry about transporting multiple bags of groceries.

But, crucially, dollar stores don’t tend to carry fresh produce, and instead carry a lot more processed food, Green added.

Paltrow has published three cookbooks so far: My Father’s Daughter, Notes from My Kitchen Table, and It’s All Good. The last book contains 185 “delicious, easy recipes” that she came up with after her doctor told her to eat “nothing processed at all!”

In a Q&A on her website about the book, Paltrow said that her philosophy is “eat good, fresh food that is totally delicious”.

Related: Food stamps: why recipients are haunted by stigmas and misconceptions

The problem with the food stamp challenge: everyone’s a critic

Though the food stamp challenge shines a light on the tight food budget of Snap recipients, it also opens the door to criticism in terms of what they buy. Similar to the criticism Paltrow has received for her choice of limes, kale and avocado, poorer Americans are often judged for purchasing unhealthy, processed food.

“The reason people are buying that food is because they have too limited of an income to buy healthier food,” Green told the Guardian.

“Hunger is an economic issue. If you get Snap benefits, you are probably very desperate, and have lost a lot of the other resources that you’ve had. This is kind of your last resort besides going to the soup kitchen.”