The former football player has taken the Newark mayor’s challenge to try to live on barely $30 a week, and is documenting it through social media. This time a photo of a meal on Twitter will actually mean something.
LIVE with Kelly and Michael co-host Michael Strahan has announced he’ll be joining Newark, New Jersey mayor Cory Booker’s food stamp challenge. Booker said he would have to live on about $30 worth of groceries each week.
“That’s the amount that New Jersey residents receive if they qualify for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the food stamp program is officially known,” said USA Today. “It comes out to $4.32 a day, Booker said.”
The amount of money is a challenge for anyone to eat on, but for a larger man like Strahan, it will be especially difficult. Wednesday, he posted a photo on Twitter of his first meal on the plan. It consisted of an omelet made with three eggs and black beans, and a side of mashed sweet potato, adding that breakfast will be his largest meal of the day.
“We have much work to do at the local level to address a legacy of structural inequities in the American food system,” Booker wrote in the blog post, according to USA Today. “As more and more working people and families — many holding down more than one job — face greater and greater challenges to juggle housing, medical, and transportation costs, meeting nutritional needs becomes a serious problem and a social justice issue.”
While Booker is not the first politician to do the challenge, he is one of the first to allow others into his daily diet through social media.
“In a video about his first day, the mayor holds his dinner (a bowl of salad) and talks about how he didn’t plan well and wasn’t near the food he purchased,” said USA Today. “On Twitter, Booker posted Wednesday afternoon he’s starting to feel ‘caffeine withdrawal’ and that his lunch consisted of a can of corn and a can of peas mixed together.”
Strahan, a former New York Giants player, is hashtagging his experience at #SNAPchallenge, and posting photos of his meals on Twitter as well.
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