Getting By on $3 a Day

This past month, the staff of the Capital Area Food Bank received an education in the daily hardships facing Texans who receive the state average of $1/day in food stamps benefits from an unlikely source...their CEO.

For the past four weeks, Food Bank CEO David Davenport has embarked on a personal challenge to eat on a "food stamps budget," only allowing himself $21/week to buy the bare essentials.

As a person with diabetes and a recent history of health problems, David lived the experience of many seniors and medically disabled Texans who count on food stamps as their only source of food. His experience, as he recounts on the CAFB blog, demonstrated the real-life tradeoffs between food and medicine that plague many food-insecure Texans.