Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
For the food police, no chili is healthy — but for sensible people, that is, for people who enjoy food that tastes good, healthy chili is chili one cooks for oneself using known high quality ingredients. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more expensive than good tasting chili made with mystery meat and sold by the can in grocery stores.
Even budget healthy chili, made with lean ground beef instead of sirloin tips, and packaged seasoning instead of fresh chili peppers, is expensive. My latest batch yielded nine cups, equivalent to five 15-ounce cans of Nalley Valley Original Chili (with beans), which sells for a dollar a can when priced by a grocer to attract customers. My cost: $2.58 per 15 ounces.
Cost is a minor issue, if an issue at all, for chili lovers with substantial incomes. But for chili lovers below the poverty line, for people on food stamps and various forms of public assistance, the kind of people known to stretch their food dollars by purchasing ramen noodles and such, and who then are criticized by the food police, healthy chili is a luxury they can’t afford. In The Food Gap is Widening, The Atlantic writer James Hamblin reports the average food stamp (officially, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; SNAP) benefit is $133 per person per month; $4.43 per day, or close to 60 percent of the cost 15 ounces of budget healthy chili.
The gap will widen further if right wing zealots like Rep. Steve Daines get their way. A year ago, Daines voted for a $40 billion cut in food stamps, a mean-spirited measure intended to let low income Americans suffer from hunger pangs so that high income Americans — Daines is one — could receive tax cuts they don’t need.