Who cares about Paltrow’s plate?
This week, actress Gwyneth Paltrow accepted a challenge from celebrity chef Mario Batali to eat on a SNAP budget for one week. The goal of Batali’s project, which benefits the New York City Food Bank, is to show how difficult it is to create healthy, filling family meals on the budget allotted to SNAP (formerly known as “food stamps”) recipients.
So Paltrow went shopping.
Afterward, she artfully arranged and photographed her groceries to showcase the $29 worth of food she would be eating for the entire week ($29 is SNAP’s average weekly allotment, which, while intended to supplement a family’s food budget, often ends up being the entire budget).
Then, as celebrities tend to do nowadays, Paltrow posted that grocery photo online, and everyone freaked out. The criticisms piled on almost immediately. She was called “out-of-touch,” “privileged,” and a whole lot worse.
Part of it is that Paltrow included not one, not two, but seven limes in her grocery purchase. Limes are something like 75 cents apiece, which means almost 20 percent of her budget went to citrus fruits that have no caloric value unless you eat them whole (which, side note, can be done; my significant other actually eats limes whole all the time, rinds and all…but I digress).
The rest of her grocery haul was comprised of vegetarian, gluten-free products like green leafy vegetables, avocadoes, some value packs of beans and rice, and corn tortillas.
An industrious journalist at The Frisky determined that Paltrow had purchased enough food to get about 1,000 calories a day total…a number that’s near starvation level for one person (and she planned to feed her entire family with it).
Needless to say, Paltrow didn’t make it the full week; she threw in the towel on day four.
Her choices, of course, show a huge disconnect between her life and the lives of America’s poor. When you have $29, you don’t spend it on a head of lettuce that has no calories to sustain you through work that likely requires that you be on your feet.
(And don’t tell me that people who get SNAP benefits don’t work, because that’s just not true. According to a study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, over 80 percent of able-bodied, working-age SNAP recipients have jobs. The problem is that those jobs pay poverty level wages.)
While her choices had plenty of nutrients, they were deficient in calories, which is a key difference. Paltrow would have been much, much better off including some high quality, filling protein and more fat in her selections, though these would have violated her “macrobiotic diet.”
So Paltrow is worthy of scrutiny and a bit of ridicule, in the end. After all, she’s also the same person who recommended a $12,000 vase in her lifestyle website’s annual Holiday Gift Guide, and currently recommends a $65 “spiralizer”… a kitchen device serving the sole purpose of turning fresh vegetables into curly garnishes.
But maybe we should back off a bit. Not because Paltrow’s feeling are hurt, or because I think she’s a person who needs backup. She’ll be fine either way; I’m sure she’s not crying herself to sleep over the opinions of regular, non-famous people.
We should back off because we need people with money to be sympathetic to those without. Because like it or not, those with money have the power to change the situation of everyone. Not in a “trickle-down economics” kind of way, but in a “people actually listen to rich people” kind of way.
Note, for example, how much attention Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, is getting for giving up his million-dollar-a-year salary to pay each and every one of his employees $70,000 a year (the number researchers say creates financial security and happiness).
Because he has money, Price’s decision to introduce a $33 minimum wage to his employees is applauded as positively saint-like, while at the same time, fast-food and retail workers picketing for half that are called lazy and, essentially, insane. How dare they think their work is worth $15 an hour?
If only those in poverty are tasked with tackling the problem, then nothing will ever change because they are unheard.
And so, when moneyed people (especially moneyed people with a loyal following) try to do something good — whether it be to start a conversation or shine a light on the dismal situation of many Americas — we should not shoot them down with ridicule.
Not that we should bow at their feet for their generosity of spirit and immediately go see their latest movie — there’s a big difference between self-promotion and promotion of the common good in America.
But we could say, “Hey, good try, Gwyneth…you gave it your best shot,” and give some money to the New York City Food Bank instead.
Jessica Vozel is originally from Perryopolis and, after attending graduate school and teaching in Ohio, now works as a freelance journalist and copywriter in the Pittsburgh area.