Gwyneth Paltrow devoted her weekly Goop-letter to her efforts with the Food Stamp Challenge this week. Even though this comes after several days of abuse hurled at Gwyneth for “poverty tourism” and peasant-lies, I kind of think this was probably her goal from the start. She didn’t dedicate herself to the challenge of trying to live on $29 a week (for food) but she always planned on writing about it for Goop. You could even say that she half-assed it for a greater purpose: to make a larger statement about how we eat, the food we buy and how women need equal pay. You can read her whole Goop-post here.

Last week, chef (and great man) Mario Batali challenged me to raise awareness and money for the NYC Food Bank by trying to live on $29 dollars for the week (what low income families on SNAP are trying to survive on). Dubious that I could complete the week, I donated to the Food Bank at the outset, and all of us at the goop office began the challenge.

As I suspected, we only made it through about four days, when I personally broke and had some chicken and fresh vegetables (and in full transparency, half a bag of black licorice). My perspective has been forever altered by how difficult it was to eat wholesome, nutritious food on that budget, even for just a few days—a challenge that 47 million Americans face every day, week, and year. A few takeaways from the week were that vegetarian staples liked dried beans and rice go a long way—and we were able to come up with a few recipes on a super tight budget.

After trying to complete this challenge (I would give myself a C-), I am even more outraged that there is still not equal pay in the workplace. Sorry to go on a tangent, but many hardworking mothers are being asked to do the impossible: Feed their families on a budget which can only support food businesses that provide low-quality food. The food system in our beautiful country needs to be subjected to a heavy revision—it is a cyclical problem, with repercussions that we all feel. I’m not suggesting everyone eat organic food from some high horse in the sky. I’m saying everyone should be able to afford fresh, real food. And if women were paid an equal wage, families might have more of a choice in the grocery aisles, not to mention in the rest of their lives.

…I know hunger doesn’t always touch us all directly—but it does touch us all indirectly. After this week, I am even more grateful that I am able to provide high-quality food for my kids. Let’s all do what we can to make this a basic human right and not a privilege.

[From Goop]

A C-minus? I guess the only thing Gwyneth can NOT do well is pretend to be poor.

Gwyneth also cites statistics about equal pay and she literally types “hats off to Patricia Arquette” for drawing attention to the issue. Real question: do some people think that Arquette was, like, the first person arguing for equal pay? As for the correlation Gwyneth draws between equal pay and food insecurity, as much as I want to nitpick her to death, if we’re looking at the realpolitik, she’s right. Food insecurity is linked to women’s pay and more often than not, it falls on mothers to care about food and what their children eat. Is that the way it SHOULD be? Of course not. In a perfect world, women and men would have equal pay for equal work and men and women would have equal interest in ensuring food security for their children.

But yes, Gwyneth did half-ass this challenge. She only stuck with it long enough to have her Goop staff come up with some recipes involving eggs and rice. Guess what she used all those limes for? Zest and garnish. Classic.

Photos courtesy of Goop, WENN.