How you can live nutritiously on a food budget of $6.25 a day...

Sean Callebs, CNN reporter, is on an adventure of sorts.

For the next 30 days, he'll live on a food budget of $176.

This is the amount provided a single person by the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in Louisiana. It's not meant, officials said, to be the sole source of food funding, but for the 1 out of 6 people in this state on food stamps, I wonder how many have additional food resources.

Callebs worked with a woman who has been on and off the program and feeds herself and two small children. She said that most low income families have little nutritional knowledge and someone once asked her if potato chips were a vegetable. She shopped with the reporter and gave him some hints about how to spend his money for the best bang.

But I was surprised by some of her choices...

• canned tuna
  
• packaged macaroni and cheese
• instant mashed potatoes
• individual packets of oatmeal
• canned vegetables
  

and some of the comments he made at the end of his video story and on his blog...

• I was told to eat carbs at every meal for energy
• I have only a little bit of chicken, ground beef, and canned tuna for protein
• I'm concerned about a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables
• Will I have the stamina to run every day, as I do now, on this restricted diet?
• I had a bowl of cereal, a banana, and a cup of tea for breakfast, and I'm hungry just a few hours later...

Okay. I was on a food assistance program myself after a divorce left me in the middle of a college semester with two toddlers. One thing I know is that the amount of aid varies from state to state, and I lived in one of the more generous. It still was a challenge to create meals that were both nutritious and flavorful.

That was years ago. So I thought I'd go to the grocery store myself, with this renewed awareness, to see what foods I might put in my cart to stretch that $6.25 daily budget.

Check back...

Blessings,

Judy