[NYDAILYNEWS] Gwyneth Paltrow...Hollywood interchangeable blonde and Eva Braun taste-alike, who's convinced herself that it would be
wonderfulif Obama were given
all the power that he needs. She was married to a guitar player in a rock band, but now she's becoming long in the tooth so he's moved on to somebody else...
is slashing her food budget to nickels and dimes, but it's all for a good cause.
The Oscar winner announced this week that she has accepted the #FoodBankNYCChallenge to live on food stamps for one week -- a grocery budget that adds up to $29, or just $1.38 per meal.
Paltrow accepted the challenge from her celebrity chef pal Mario Batali, who also invited music stars Sting and Deborah Harry to participate.
The Food Bank of New York is sponsoring the challenge to bring awareness to the fact that "Congress cut food stamps twice since 2013," leading to an increase in visits to soup kitchens and food pantries.
"New Yorkers can't afford any cuts to food stamps," reads a message on the organization's website.
Before there were food stamps (which is apparently nothing more than an ATM card now) there was the "Surplus Food Program." Every month or maybe it was every couple weeks the Department of Agriculture handed out flour, powdered eggs, powdered milk, a Spam variant or pork and gravy, pinto or kidney beans, and an enormous block of cheese. There may have been a few other items, but none of the stuff required refrigeration and there were enough calories, protein, and fats to sustain a moderately large family. As a diet is was pretty uninteresting after month two, but you wouldn't starve to death on it, and occasionally you'd run into somebody willing to trade a couple quarts of beer for half a block of cheese. But you had to grow your own fruits and veggies, or trade the cheese to someone else for them and forego the beer. Probably Gwyneth would get by better (and probably put on a few pounds) with the Surplus Food than with the food stamp debit card.