Summary
House Republicans are considering a 20% cut to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, impacting over 22 million households, as part of a $5 trillion deficit reduction plan.
The proposed changes to SNAP would save $247 billion over a decade by rolling back a Biden-era increase tied to the USDA’s “thrifty food plan.”
Critics argue the cuts could harm vulnerable populations and reduce demand for food production, while Republicans view the changes as a way to curb spending and encourage employment.
In the first few years out of college, I was able to really stretch my dollar with dry beans and rice and a big bag of yellow onions. I had salt and pepper and sometimes I’d add some butter for flavor. I’d chuckle as people would ask “but where do you get your PROTEIN” when I was using this for a lot of my dinners: “uh, the butter and the rice and the beans? Not to mention the other meals?”. Sometimes, I would throw this in a container and take to work for lunch when things were especially tight.
Nutritional beliefs in this country are still pretty terrible, but back then, even as an omnivore for every other meal, when I’d eat only rice and beans for dinner, I’d get serious concern from family and friends about this, like I was going to die from a protein deficiency. Still makes me shake my head…I think most people have such a silly view of things that they actually assume that protein is a synonym for “beef”.
Haha, ya that is amusing. Protein is probably the easiest thing to manage in that situation as long as you can enjoy rice and beans.
Now that I’m vegetarian, I even still get this. I just don’t understand this. Something like 5% or so are vegetarians in this country and yet there still seems to be this prevailing “wisdom” that getting protein is a major and possibly even life-threatening concern.
I suppose a lot of it comes down to marketing. All these items on menus and bits of processed food have big indicators of how many grams of protein they have in them as if it’s a health food or something. That, and of course all the money behind SAD marketing that leads people to think beef and dairy are not horrible for their health, but actually good for them, possibly even necessary for survival…and of course, don’t get me started on the certain class of men that think they’ll turn gay or into women if they don’t eat meat, LOL. Now THAT is marketing.
What do you find is the actual hardest thing to get properly and do you need a supplement for it?
Like I know some people struggle with iron. But it could be various things depending on your food preferences.
As a vegetarian, absolutely nothing. I know vegans are encouraged to supplement with B-12 as there may be a deficiency otherwise, unless they eat vegetables grown in soil and don’t wash them. Which I think applies to almost no one, including vegans.
I supplement B-12 - my understanding is that omnivores probably should as well. I also add vitamin D, esp. in the winter months, but neither of those I do because of being a vegetarian.
When it comes to iron, I specifically started looking for multivitamins that explicitly say they DO NOT have iron (even if I only take one weekly typically) because apparently too much iron is very much a problem and I think the typical multi has way too much, and I’ve never had any sort of anemia. In fact, once I dropped all the meat, I had a lot more energy, so I’ve never really worried about getting too little iron.