Ham and cheese are both notoriously expensive though, and not especially healthy. One day of filet mignon would eat up the whole budget, but thats not an argument against what I said.
As for out of touch, I grew up eating government peanut butter and free school lunches. Lots of years that is all I ate. Food assistance is great and we should do more, but jeff bezos hording wealth isn't causing people to starve as gp suggests, food is incredibly cheap. The idea people are starving is rediculous.
I’m a bit confused then… what exactly do you propose the average American should put in their sandwiches—your suggestion—at a $40/mo budget? Eggs and lentils?
I live on only a bit more than that myself. I batch cook all of my meals for the week on Sunday mornings. It's simple food, all made from raw ingredients. I don't eat any sandwiches, though, since bread is usually highly processed and not cheap.
Nothing is objectively “bad” about that, but it is an insane stretch to call that “great food.” That is subsistence eating.
Moreover—can you put beans, rice, eggs, and mixed veggies in a sandwich? Because a sandwich was one of OP’s “$40/mo” suggestions. A food budget where a simple ham and cheese sandwich is an unimaginable luxury is ridiculous to propose as a reasonable target.
Why isn't it great food? People line up to get rice, veggies, and beans, onion, and chicken in a tortilla at Chipotle, but if you combine those ingredients at home you are 'subsistence eating'?
Well you seem to be skipping over the fresh cilantro, herbs and spices, marinating time, and expert preparation found in a Chipotle. Do you understand what it takes to build and maintain a respectable and functional spice rack?
Not to mention the spoilage that goes on. The rice and beans can keep long-term, but you'll need to do logistics on chicken, tortillas etc to keep fresh ones in the pipeline without wasting any, which you can't afford either.
Look, I've had food boxes before. The food box is an amazing wondrous bit of charity where you can get a ton of free food just for asking. There's cereal, I've gotten big hunks of frozen meat, dry beans and rice, I've gotten bits of candy and such, lots of staples, powdered milk, canned chickpeas and spinach and you-name-it.
However the food boxes only go so far. They won't cook the meals for you. They won't give you the utensils, pots and pans. You don't get any fats, oils, herbs, spices, or seasonings. they won't tell you which ingredients combine in a flavorful way. You don't get any recipes that use these ingredients and don't call for something you don't have.
Now you boil some water, throw in some beans and rice plain, and cook until soft. Go ahead, throw in some string beans for vitamins, and some kind of protein. Spoil yourself! Then try to choke that down in the absence of salt, butter, or anything that might impart flavor. How long until you're going to just kill yourself?
Well there you go, add chicken and tortillas to the mix and your budget doubles just for dinner. People generally enjoy eating more than just the bare-bones, most minimal staples.
Dodging the question… provide me one example of a nutritious set of sandwich ingredients that can be procured at a cost of 43¢ per serving (assuming you spend a generous third of your $1.30 a day budget on just a sandwich). Bread alone would cost that much.
Great, now I need to own a car and afford gas to drive 40mi to the nearest library. (More importantly, now I need to have a kitchen to cook in.)
You realize that there are people who are homeless and who live in areas that don't have any support systems for homelessness (e.g. homeless shelters), right?
I feel like you're unclear on what poverty, homelessness, and hunger are.
You have proposed that a homeless person obtain a phone, find a library that'll mail books, obtain a mailbox, have a book mailed to them, presumably pay for return postage, all so they can obtain recipes to cook on a stove they don't have with utensils they likely lack with ingredients they can't afford.
Homeless people aren't in that situation because they needed someone to write down "how to make rice in a pot", nor are they likely to have discretionary income for your proposals.
>I feel like you're unclear on what poverty, homelessness, and hunger are.
And I feel like you do not understand that the average American is not homeless.
If you are homeless you are not going to be a person who is spending >$40/mo for food and needing a cook book to make cheap food interesting to eat. You will just buy cheap food until you bootstrap yourself back to a house and a stable job.
Scroll up to where this comments thread says "You realize that there are people who are homeless", then talked about a box under a bridge, then not having a mailbox. Who did you think we were discussing?
Our knowledge of what is healthy is spotty at best, but plenty of countries that eat a lot of ham and cheese (France, Spain, Italy) are fairly OK health-wise, so it certainly seems to indicate that there is nothing seriously wrong about either.
As for out of touch, I grew up eating government peanut butter and free school lunches. Lots of years that is all I ate. Food assistance is great and we should do more, but jeff bezos hording wealth isn't causing people to starve as gp suggests, food is incredibly cheap. The idea people are starving is rediculous.