Bryan House employees challenge themselves to eat on only $3 per day

Elaine Finley’s refrigerator is bare.

She isn’t allowed to eat at home this week – it would put her over her budget. 

Twenty-one dollars is the average food-stamp allotment per week for an individual in the United States. Finley, the director of presidential events at the Bryan House, is one of six Bryan House employees who volunteered to endure the Bloomington Food Stamp Challenge. Since Monday, they have each been eating on this small amount of money and will do so until Friday.  

“We’re not supposed to do any snacking. We’re not supposed to let anyone purchase a meal for us,” Finley said. “We are being very careful. We’re taking this seriously.” 

The Food Stamp Challenge is part of National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, which lasts until Sunday. This event serves to spread awareness of the 22.2 percent of Monroe County citizens who live in poverty, according to 2005 numbers. This is the highest percentage in the state, according to the Stats Indiana Web site, a database of demographic information about Indiana.

To comply with the challenge, Finley, along with Bryan House employees Diane Jung, Tami Davis, Devin McGuire, Trudy Jacobs and Barb Metz, is eating only two meals a day – breakfast and lunch – and they will share them like a family would. They cannot eat out at restaurants, and they cannot eat anything already stocked in their pantry except condiments and spices.

Metz, the Bryan House chef, does the grocery shopping and prepares whatever she can find for only $3 per person. She shops at Kroger, Marsh and Bloomingfoods Market and Deli, searching for the cheapest fresh produce she can find.

“What we’ll eat is very light vegetarian type of food that mostly includes produce,” Metz said. “No meat, which is where you spend your money.”

On Monday, they ate oatmeal for breakfast and polenta with roast veggies for lunch. Each had an animal cracker for dessert.

“It’s going to be a little easier for us because I’m a chef and I’ve taken nutrition classes, and I know how to provide a balanced, healthy meal,” Metz said.

She said she also has an advantage over many people living on food stamps because she has a fully stocked pantry of condiments and a car for transportation, and she is cooking for adults, not children who are picky eaters, as many young mothers on welfare are.

But the people at Bryan House have all had their own real encounters with poverty, as most were struggling parents themselves.   

“At one point or another, in all of our lives, we have been without money,” Finley said. “This isn’t new to us by any stretch of the imagination.”  

But Metz said that today the cost of eating is much higher than it was when she was a young mother, and she is stretching every dollar allotted to her for the challenge.

Despite the large number of poverty-stricken people in Monroe County, Metz said she thinks Bloomington is advanced in its efforts to promote awareness about the problem and provide options.

“We have a community kitchen and community gardens,” she said. “And all of this has developed within the last 10 years.” 

Finley said she hopes the challenge will help her and the rest of the Bryan House staff relate more to those less fortunate than they are, while serving as a reminder that during hard economic times, everyone might have to give up a little of what they love.

“We are going to get more hit with the economic downturn. It will get worse before it gets better,” she said. “Economically, we may need to learn how to tighten our belts.”