The Hunger Challenge Never Really Ends

The 2010 Hunger Challenge will take place in late September. If you'd like to try living on a food stamp budget - for a week or even a day - email us at HungerChallenge@sffb.org. Or, spend a few minutes seeing what you would do to get enough food in this interactive "Hunger 101" demonstration. And remember, for the 150,000 people facing hunger in San Francisco, the real challenge goes on every single day.

7 Million More Food Stamp Recipients vs. Last Year - and Half Are Children

The Los Angeles Times reports today:

A study finds 7 million additional people receiving food stamps compared with a year ago, half of them children. California had a 21% increase in recipients. As more families are hammered by the recession, more are using food stamps to feed their kids, according to a study by the Brookings Institution and First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group. Read the full story

New York Times: Living on Nothing but Food Stamps

A New York Times (Jan. 3, 2010) piece by Jason Deparle and Robert M. Gebeloff reveals the surprising story of those who have been forced to rely food stamps as their only source of "income":

After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card. Read the entire story...

Tyson Goal Reached! 100,000 lbs of Free Food on the Way!

Thank you! In just over a day, we collected enough Twitter messages to put 100,000 pounds of protein-rich food onto Tyson trucks headed for the San Francisco Food Bank. Wondering just how much food that is? It will fill three huge tractor-trailers! Learn more about Tyson's donation and see the eye-opening hunger facts people were tweeting here. Feel free to keep on tweeting, too!

2009 Hunger Challenge - September 20-26

Can you eat for just $4 a day? That's the average amount a Californian on food stamps has to spend on a day's meals.

The San Francisco Food Bank's 2009 Hunger Challenge is this week - September 20-26. Try it for a week or even just a day. More than 35 million people in our country live on a food stamp budget – can you? If you'd like to join the Hunger Challenge, email us at: HungerChallenge@SFFB.org.

Can't take the Hunger Challenge? Consider making a donation to help us feed the 150,000 people in San Francisco who are unsure where their next meal is coming from. Your $20 donation allows us to provide $180 worth of groceries!

CBS5 Reporter Sue Kwon Joins the Hunger Challenge

CBS5 ConsumerWatch reporter Sue Kwon took the Hunger Challenge and reported about her experiences. Here are links to her stories:
~Monday (noon): Sue describes the Hunger Challenge
~Monday (6 pm): A look at hunger stats; Sue's shopping trip with Hunger Challenge blogger Amy Sherman and her first day eating for just $4 
~Tuesday: Shopping with a food stamp recipient and info on food stamp requirements
~Wednesday: What it feels like on the Hunger Challenge, plus viewer comments
~Thursday: San Francisco Food Bank grocery pantries, recipes with Amy  
~Friday: The Tyson donation arrives!

We're thrilled - and very grateful - that Sue and CBS5 made such a big commitment to shining a light on hunger in San Francisco!
[In the photo above, Sue shops for the Challenge with veteran Hunger Challenge blogger Amy Sherman; below, all the food Sue had to eat for a week.]

Tips, Recipes and Blog Posts from Last Year

Click on the link below for a complete listing of all the blog posts published by last year's Hunger Challenge bloggers. You'll find tips, shopping lists, recipes and lots of observations about living on a limited food budget:

2008 Hunger Challenge blogger posts

To see a compilation of all the recipes created by last year's Hunger Challenge bloggers, go here:

2008 Hunger Challenge recipes

The politics of food stamps - a great reading list

Maria Niles of PopConsumer just posted her first 2009 Hunger Challenge blog entry (she's getting a big headstart!). Maria comes at the Challenge from her perspective as a political activist, so for a great reading list of blogs and articles related to hunger and food politics, see her posting on BlogHer: How To Use Hunger To Fuel Political Activism.

Some Food Stamp Facts

• Nearly 34 million people in the U.S. received food stamps in April 2009, up about 20% over April 2008.
• Approximately 2.5 million Californians (1 million households) receive food stamps each month. That is expected to increase to 2.8 million Californians (1.15 million households) over the next few months.
• In California, a single person is eligible to receive food stamps, only if their yearly gross income is $14,079 or less. A 2-person household is eligible only if they make $18,941 or less. And a family of 4 can't have more than $28,665 in income. So in San Francisco, where the cost of living is particularly high, there are many people scraping by on extremely low incomes who still aren't eligible for food stamps.
• Food stamps are officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the benefit is now distributed on swipe cards that can be used at the grocery store. Though in California, it's not exactly a "snap" to get food stamps. The state makes it so difficult to get the benefit, that it ranks last in the entire country in the number of eligible people who are actually receiving food stamps.
• The government estimates that for every $1 of food stamp money spent in California, it generates $1.85 in business for the state's economy. Even more reason to make sure all those eligible receive the benefits.
  

Food Stamp Users Hit Record High of 33.8 Million

"It was the fifth straight month of record participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [the official government name for what most people know as the food stamp program], according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up 1.8 percent from the prior month," Bloomberg reported this week. "Total spending was $4.5 billion, up 19 percent from the previous all-time high reached in March, the USDA said."

2.7 million Californians receive food stamps, second only to the number who receive them in Texas. The average monthly benefit for an individual rose 17 percent from March, to $133.28 - or $1.43 per meal (based on a 31-day month).

Read the entire story here.

ABC Starts $15 Meal "Dare"

The hosts of Good Morning America are challenging chefs to create meals from $15 bags of groceries - though they also get to add ingredients from a well-stocked pantry. Sounds like a luxury, compared to $1 per person per meal, doesn't it? Here's a video showing Emeril Lagasse's "Dare" meal.

Food Stamp Usage Hits New High

There are more food stamp recipients in the U.S. than ever before - 32 million.

The Hunger Challenge

The San Francisco Food Bank challenged food bloggers to spend just $21 on food for an entire week. That's the average amount a food stamp recipient has to spend. Read about their experiences in the posts below.

U.S. Food Stamp Recipients Hit All-Time High

Here's alarming news about hunger in the U.S. and a record number of people in need.

Jane Black writes Nov. 26, in the Washington Post:

Fueled by rising unemployment and food prices, the number of Americans on food
stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing
the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina...Breaking the
symbolically important 30-million mark comes on the heels of government data
that showed that 11.9 million people went hungry in America at some point last
year. That included nearly 700,000 children, up more than 50% from the year
before.

Tyson Donation Arrives!

On October 29, a Tyson truck pulled up to the San Francisco Food Bank with 35,000 pounds of chicken, thanks to the Hunger Challenge!

Hunger Challenge bloggers Amy Sherman (Cooking with Amy) and Faith Kramer (Blog Appetit) were interviewed by two TV news stations, along with Ed Nicholson of Tyson and Paul Ash of SF Food Bank. This was SF Food Bank's share of the 200,000 pounds Tyson donated to six Bay Area Food Banks. Read all about it here - and check out the slide show to the left.