Poverty Diet Challenge under way in Q-C
Brian Wellner
As a volleyball player for Bettendorf High School, Haley Bankson snacks all the time, especially right before after-school practice.
The freshman volunteered for the two-day Poverty Diet Challenge, part of the Student Hunger Drive. The challenge opened Wednesday morning with a breakfast and ends today.
She said it won’t be easy staying at or under the $3.47-per-day allotment for food. She was getting concerned after breakfast at the Hy-Vee store in Bettendorf to kick off the challenge.
“Oatmeal and a banana doesn’t really fill me up,” she said.
She really has to watch what she eats at school. She may split meals with a friend, she said.
The only food she’ll eat before volleyball practice is an apple, she said.
The Poverty Diet Challenge is in its second year. The Student Hunger Drive has been going on for 25 years and has brought in 12 million pounds of food to River Bend Foodbank in Moline.
“We want to make this community more aware of what it actually feels like to be hungry and what it might be to be an individual surviving on food stamps,” Denise Hester, executive director of the Student Hunger Drive, said of the challenge.
“We’re walking a mile in their shoes in just two days,” she said.
Wednesday morning, she passed a Starbucks “looking longingly” and realized one cup of coffee and one bagel could surpass the day’s $3.47 allotment, she said. According to the Hunger Drive, $3.47 is the average food stamp benefit per day in Iowa and Illinois.
Hester is one of several participants in the Poverty Diet Challenge.
Students from Bettendorf High School eat breakfast Wednesday at the Bettendorf Hy-Vee as part of the Student Hunger Drive Poverty Diet Challenge. (Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES)
“Speaking for myself, it makes you very aware as you start to think about the things you eat on a daily basis,” she said.
Stacy Mitchell, Hy-Vee’s registered dietitian, prepared a poverty diet menu for participants.
“I tried to pick a good bunch of whole grains, like pasta and bread,” she said. “The meal plan fills up the (USDA) food pyramid,” minus one or two vegetables.
For instance, Wednesday’s suggested lunch included 2 ounces of light tuna, two slices of 100 percent whole wheat bread, two-thirds of a cup of applesauce and two-thirds of a cup of frozen vegetables.
For Wednesday’s dinner, the meal plan had one cup of whole wheat spaghetti with sauce, 4 ounces of ground beef, a half cup of green beans and a glass of skim milk.
There was room for snacks, including a fruit cereal bar and a frozen fudge bar.
Meat is part of the diet menu. To get protein, Mitchell also recommended beans, peanut butter and yogurt.
The menu does not include any prepared meals, and Mitchell recommended buying in bulk.
“Prepared meals are really hard to do on that budget,” she said.
She often hears people say they can’t eat healthy because it costs too much.
“From my point of view as a dietitian, you can eat very healthy on a very small budget,” she said, pointing to her menu as evidence.
“It looks like quite a bit of food on paper. It’s all about budgeting and planning.qctimes.com/news/local/article_b143e1e4-d1c3-11df-bf5e-001cc4c002e0.html
Oct. 6, 2010