Ashley Paradis says she thought a food-bank life would be easy at first.
She and five other Grade 9 students at W.D. Cuts challenged themselves this week to live exclusively off food from a food bank for seven days.
When she compiled the list of what she could eat, Paradis says it seemed like a lot of food.
Then she went shopping. The bill came to about $25, and the food barely filled two bags.
Now she's scrimping on food, planning every meal and generally starving. She's exhausted, and looks enviously at people eating fries in the mall. All this, and it's only Wednesday.
"I'm sick of peanut butter and pasta," she says. "I just want a juicy hamburger or a cookie."
Food bank challenge
Joining the students on the challenge is JoAnn Blachford, who teaches the Leadership class at W.D. Cuts.
Blachford says the students got the idea for this challenge last week when they took a field trip to the Mustard Seed, an Edmonton non-profit group, and saw what went into a basic food hamper. Surprised at how small the hamper was, the students decided to see what it would be like to live off it for a week.
"The word I keep hearing is, 'I'm starving!'" Blachford says.
A basic one-person, one-month hamper at the Mustard Seed, which is designed to supplement, not replace, a person's food supply, contains one can or box each of fruit, vegetables, meat, beans, soup, pasta, Kraft Dinner, dry soup, bread and nine to 13 other items, says food bank manager Cindy Richardson. The students divided this in four to simulate a week's worth of food.
That leaves depressingly little for each meal. Alex Sutton, who might eat a box of Kraft Dinner in one sitting, has to make one last seven days.
"None of us can have three meals a day," he says, and all of them have meal plans.
Bread-lover Michael Clapp has to settle for just seven slices a week.
"For lunch the other day, I had like this much Alphagetti," he says, his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.
The thin provisions make it very tough to concentrate or do sports, says Kayla Lariviere.
"You're so hungry that you feel sick," she says. "You don't get enough to be active or do anything."
Eye-opener
It's pretty challenging to live exclusively off a food hamper, says Suzan Krecsy, director of the St. Albert Food Bank — you can't choose what you get, and your ingredients are often unfamiliar.
"It's going to be pretty boring, and it's not going to be very [nutritionally] balanced."
Students on such a diet would not have three meals a day, she says, and their health and concentration would be compromised.
According to Food Banks Canada, about 44 per cent of Alberta's food bank users, or some 25,700 people, are under 18. These aren't necessarily people who are poor, Sutton says; many of the bank users they met have or had jobs, but needed help due to accidents or circumstance.
They certainly aren't doing it by choice, Clapp says. "I don't think anyone would want to eat [this] all the time."
The students say the experience has really opened their eyes, with some, like Lariviere, planning to volunteer more at the food bank as a result.
"Nobody should have to live through this," she says. "It's definitely inhumane."
The students' challenge wraps up on Monday.
The challenge
Here's what students estimated a typical person would have to eat in a week if they lived exclusively off a food hamper:<br />o 1 Mr. Noodles<br />o 1 Kraft Dinner<br />o 2 cans vegetables<br />o 1 can each of beans, meat, Alphagetti, and tomato sauce<br />o 7 slices of bread<br />o 1 bag of pasta<br />o 1 jar of peanut butter (meant to last three months)<br />o coffee<br />o ketchup
