At the beginning of May, I participated in Winnipeg Harvest’s Hunger and Poverty Awareness Commitment. The idea behind it was to learn about and raise awareness about hunger and poverty issues by spending a week living on $4 / day for food. This allotment was for food, but also for using the washing machine or dryer ($1 and $1.50, respectively), cable / Satellite, Internet ($1 each), or your cell phone ($2).

I succeeded in doing this properly for only two days. The other five days, I caved and used my cell phone.

But it wasn’t just that I use my iPhone obsessively – even if you take all of those items out of the equation and only focus on using the $4 for food, the hunger was still intense. I wasn’t sleeping well. My energy levels were down. I was living on lentils and rice and apples and eggs and coffee, in my effort to put my dollars towards healthier items (and, er, caffeine), and it was hard. I chose to purchase my ingredients from VitaHealth and bought organic, fair trade items, so granted they were a little pricier, but when I wandered through my local Giant Tiger (which is the main grocery store that people in my area shop at), the price difference wasn’t that great.

The produce available at the local Giant Tiger was super ripe, and would be turning bad in just a couple days. In comparison, the pre-made, no-name-brand snacks and meals lining the shelves were priced incredibly low. It’s no wonder that the majority of the clientele there load their carts with heavily processed items. When you’re keeping hunger at bay, a box of mac and cheese for $1 seems like a more viable option for a family than a few apples at $1 each.

Being a Certified Holistic Nutritionist and someone who truly enjoys budgeting and menu planning, I found myself in a very interesting position during this week-long Commitment. I was in a prime position to test it. I know how to find healthy food, I know how to shop on a limited income, and I know how to cook food and mix and match ingredients. But even with that, I still found it hard. And frankly I simply couldn’t do it.

Apples, a food I normally eat daily, became a precious commodity. I drank coffee at $0.50 / cup to reduce my appetite midway through the day. Mr. Science and I went running one day and it was the crappiest run I had gone on in a long time (which is saying something, since my running style isn’t particularly fast or long-lasting). Considering I only did this Commitment for one week, and didn’t even stay within my budget completely the entire time, it was incredible to see the effects it had on my personal and professional life.

There are so many pieces involved when it comes to having access to healthy, affordable food. Grocery stores with healthy, affordable food are far and few between. As I said before, the main store in my neighbourhood is the Giant Tiger. I think that the people there are doing a great job of trying to connect with the local community, but let’s face it: it’s primarily a store featuring quick, processed meals. We need more options and more whole foods – and we need everyone to be able to afford healthy, nutritious foods and ingredients.

And then there is the cooking skills themselves. Having access to healthy, affordable foods is meaningless if the consumers don’t know what to do with the food once they’ve brought it home. We need to have better transportation, more grocery stores, emphasis on healthy foods, prices brought down, and an increase in cooking skill options if we are going to tackle this issue and reduce the hunger and poverty prevalent everywhere.

Healthy, affordable food is an essential, basic human right. Let’s do what we can to make it more readily accessible to all.

Learn more about issues related to accessing healthy, affordable food, and what you can do to take action, at www.winnipegharvest.org and www.foodmattersmanitoba.ca.