Newark Mayor Cory Booker has taken the challenge to live on the same food budget available to those in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—the equivalent of $4.32 per day.
He says he's already found difficulties, including going without some items he's accustomed to, like caffeine, and finding that if he doesn't plan very carefully, he's without food for long stretches of time during the day.
Media Matterspoints out that there is some confusion in the media over the point Booker is making, but this is precisely the challenge facing some six million Americans.
Here are the choices Booker made:
Booker will have to survive off 17 cans of beans, seven yams, two bags of frozen vegetables and two apples for the next seven days.
In an interesting post, NJ.com users have weighed in on the choices and said what they might have done—with the recurring themes of buying dried beans and the mayor being out of touch.
That, it seems, is the point of the exercise: A lot of us are out of touch with what it'd take to eat on $4.32 a day.
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