Food and Money on Film

A California couple merged their expertise to produce the documentary “Food Stamped,” examining how to eat healthily with very little money, shown Friday at the Gold Coast International Film Festival.

Shira and Yoav Potash are at the center of this one-hour examination of childhood obesity, poor diets, poverty and social changes because they spent a week trying to feed themselves a decent diet on a $50 budget.

Shira, who is a food educator, and Yoav, a filmmaker, document their own venture, but also report on members of congress who have done something similar and interview school nutritionists, community activists and others who are trying to do something to improve the diets of the American public. They started out trying to report on their own experiences but gradually widened the focus.

They note that cheap food is often the least nutritional but families struggling to get by on little money often have no alternatives because unsubsidized but healthier foods are too expensive or just not available in poorer communities.  The effect of the film is to document the grim realities of poverty and bad policies that encourage poor eating habits but also highlights the sprouting of grassroots efforts to improve the diets and health of poor and middle-class people.

Because of Shira’s nutritional expertise, the couple managed to eat fairly well on the $50 but not without some testy moments as they realized how limited their choices were and what they’d given up—desserts and coffee—to meet their budget limitations. They even cheat just a little—toward the end of the week, they come up short while trying to buy challah but another shopper kicks in several cents. They also try recycling but that yields only 82 cents.

“We were trying to eat healthy but we weren’t perfect. If we’d done it for a month, the novelty would have worn off,” Yoav said. After a week, a nutritionist checked their diet and found that they’d done pretty well, eating a good balance of foods, but that the caloric intake was a little low, especially for Yoav.

Sticking to their income-limited plan “would have gotten harder as the diet gets mundane; it’s boring,” Shira said.  As someone dedicated to eating healthily, she said she spends considerable time preparing elaborate meals but trying to maintain such a diet on that budget “takes a lot of time that people don’t always have.”  She said she became interested in testing the food stamp budget when teaching students about good nutrition, “It occurred to me that I didn’t know if they could afford what we were teaching.”

 That question led them around the country to find out what schools or community programs were doing to put children on a healthy path but also to explore how and where money is spent on food.  The film provides a brief history of efforts by the federal government to both feed people and support farmers, as well as the rise in farmers’ markets, the lack of good food purchasing opportunities in poor communities, and programs to teach city kids how to grow food, cooking and smart food choices.