Filmmaker Yoav Potash and his nutrition educator wife, Shira, make FOOD STAMPED a very personal film. Taking the Food Stamp Challenge, they vividly illustrate the challenges faced by people who are forced to rely on food stamps to put food on the table. They are obviously a solid couple, and one with a fine sense of humor and irony, but with only a dollar a meal to work with, they are seen dumpster diving, arguing about what to eat – and when to eat it – from the meager stores in their pantry, and stressing over being able to put a traditional Shabbat challah on the Friday night table. Interspersed with the couple rising to the challenge they have set for themselves, are visits with legislators who have done the same, people who are facing the challenge out of necessity, not choice, and an insight into the seemingly mutually exclusive issues of hunger and obesity in America.
When I spoke with Potash, it was when the film screened as part of the 2011 San Francisco Indie Fest. The conversation covered how he arrived at a dollar a day as his budget, what he learned about how to make nutrition, not dollars, the point of food stamps, and what his mother thought of his experiment.
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