Opinion: SNAP judgment: We aren’t doing enough to help food-insecure Pennsylvanians

Could you feed yourself with just $6 per day? For five days, we tried.

Food insecurity is worse now than it was during the pandemic; there isn’t a single community that isn’t touched by it. Nearly 13% of our nation’s population, or just over 42 million people, rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to afford the foodstuffs essential to health and well-being. Pennsylvania has the eighth-most SNAP participants in the nation, with more than 15% of our population receiving SNAP benefits. Yet the average benefit for a SNAP recipient is just $6 per day.

This past week, we had the humbling experience of participating in the Food Research & Action Center’s SNAP Challenge 2025 – attempting to keep ourselves fed on that meager sum. Starting Monday, March 17 and ending Friday, March 21, we each had a grand total of $30 to spend to meet our food needs. To paraphrase the Don Henley song, “Heart of the Matter”: All the things we thought we’d figured out, we had to learn again.

There were sometimes impossible tradeoffs. Often, the most affordable and accessible options were the least healthy. Good nutrition and fresh food cost more, an expense unattainable with the budgetary restrictions imposed. And forget about buying in bulk: It is much more cost-effective, but with a limited amount of money to spend at one time, it’s not an option.

Gone are treats and even snacks. Instead, there is stigma and shame. The anxiety increases as each item is rung up and the total creeps closer to your budget cap. Embarrassment flames your cheeks at having to put back food to lower the total bill. The mental toll this takes – in addition to the physical burden from diminished healthy eating – is hard to describe, but even harder to experience.

You realize that math skills quickly become a SNAP recipient’s best friend. Pennsylvania, thankfully, does not tax the sale of food, so we didn’t have to account for that cost in our $30 budget. Still, ensuring that our food purchases were driven not just by dollars, but also by sense, had never been so crucial. And we quickly realized just how savvy SNAP recipients must be to make this work, day in and day out.

Being in fairly good health and just being able to scrape by, we learned just how quickly a lesser quality nutritional diet can affect your health. By the third day of the challenge, Rep. Kinkead was battling a full-blown cold with no comfort to be found in the normal foods she would reach for to recover. Now imagine having a chronic health condition or a sick child, needing to be able to provide an even more precise and specific nutritional diet. If food is indeed medicine, there are millions out there currently on SNAP not only being prescribed the wrong doses, but the incorrect prescription.

It isn’t just your physical health that suffers on such a limited budget; it is also your sense of well-being. You opt out of social gatherings so you don’t have to explain why you’re only drinking water and not getting a meal. Forget hosting friends for dinner – there’s nothing to share.  And when you consider that being constantly in survival mode is as bad for your health as any ultra-processed food, you realize how essential that time with friends really is.

When we told people that we were taking the SNAP Challenge, they reacted with disbelief. Perhaps the reaction of the cashier at the grocery store where we made our SNAP Challenge purchases describes it best. When we told her about the challenge, her eyes got huge and she exclaimed in astonishment, “Six dollars a day? A day, not a meal?! I would starve!” (Check out the video HERE.)

No, you won’t starve on $6 per day. The cynical people of the world who view SNAP recipients with disdain will show you lots of meals that can be put together with just $6 a day. However, surviving is far from thriving.

We accepted the SNAP Challenge and survived those five days. But 42 million Americans have to do it on a daily basis. Today, even with inflation continuing to diminish how far SNAP recipients can stretch their dollar, the federal government is looking at a $230 billion cut to the program. Before Congress votes to make this nutritional obstacle course even more difficult, maybe they should take the challenge as well to get a firsthand look at the struggles faced by millions of families. Maybe then we can craft legislation to help food-insecure families thrive instead of just survive.