Gwyneth Paltrow eats on $29/week
Lifestyle guru participates in campaign highlighting food insecurity
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleRenee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.
Gwyneth Paltrow has switched from GOOP to SNAP…at least for this week. The entitled lifestyle guru is currently participating in the “SNAP Challenge” (formerly called the “Food Stamp Challenge”) to highlight how millions of Americans must make do with very little food each week.
So, for at least the next seven days, Paltrow is focusing more on how far you can stretch canned soup than on soup detox cleansing.
For several years now, celebrities of all sorts (as well as some regular American folks concerned about food insecurity) have been subsisting one week each year on just $28 (the average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program weekly allocation for a single adult).
Eating on so little isn’t easy, and it isn’t pretty. But if anyone can make it even the tiniest bit aesthetic and upscale, it’s Paltrow. She tweeted a photo of the weekly grocery order she bought for $29, and it included limes, cilantro, an avocado, a hot pepper, and several types of healthy leafy greens.
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
— Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015
The rest of what she bought is what most people on such a tight budget would get: rice, beans, eggs and bread (in this case tortillas, as it seems from Paltrow’s photo that she’s planning on going in a Mexican direction with her ingredients).
Amy Woolard pointed out in Slate that Paltrow, who represents anything but poverty, has gotten some heat for participating in The SNAP Challenge. However, deputizing powerful and famous individuals to raise awareness about the fact that this government benefit lifts millions of Americans out of poverty can be a good thing.
“If GOOP is truly the cultural opposite of food stamps, then maybe Gwyneth Paltrow is exactly the right person to learn from a SNAP challenge,” Woolard wrote.
We are confident that if Paltrow puts her mind to subsisting for a week on less than $30, she’ll be able to temporarily detach herself from her rarified lifestyle. After all, she’s very good at conscious uncoupling.
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