GOOP queen Gwyneth Paltrow has decided to let go of her expensive smoothies and detox juices and see what it is like to live on nothing but $29 a week.
Her decision is part of a challenge to live on the amount given by the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to food stamp recipients of New York, who have to manage to live on less than $30 every week.
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 Food Bank of New York City started the #FoodBankNYCChallenge to help raise awareness for hunger and poverty in the country and strengthen the call for lawmakers not to further cut food stamps in the future. The Food Bank says Congress slashed down the budget for food stamps twice in 2013, resulting in an increase in visitors to soup kitchens and food pantries. "New Yorkers can't afford any cuts to food stamps," says the Food Bank on its website.
We're walking in their shoes to see how far we get. I nominate @RidingShotgunLA to do #FoodBankNYCChallenge & donate: https://t.co/eBEJ0hqEHG — Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015
Paltrow was invited to the #FoodBankNYCChallenge by her friend, chef Mario Batali, a member of the board of the Food Bank who promotes the challenge along with other chefs.
As seen in her tweet, the actress seems to be determined about buying as much healthy food as possible based on her extremely limited budget. Paltrow taking the challenge is notable since she is a strict follower of her self-made GOOP detox diet, which bans a lot of things found in generic grocery store brands that are what people living on food stamps can usually afford. This array includes gluten, sugar, caffeine, soy, dairy, corn, alcohol, potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant.
The GOOP website shows the menu for a seven-day detox diet. A typical day's meals would consist of lemon water, clean granola with coconut yogurt and blueberries, braised lentil salad with roasted kabocha, arugula and avocado, house special native juice (made from lacinato kale, dandelion leaves, parsley, lemons, celery stalks, and English cucumber), and grilled zucchini socca tacos. Obviously, a single day's meals alone costs a whole lot more than $29.
"We've got a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden - a luxury, I know, but it's one of the best investments I've made," Paltrow is believed to have said. "One evening, when I had my wood-burning stove going, I realized I hadn't thought of dessert."
Let's just hope she can survive living on $29 a week.
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Photo: Daniel Oines | Flickr
