Gwyneth Paltrow Cheats on Food Bank NYC Challenge
Amagansett star Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted to cheating on her $29 food bank challenge. In a post on the star’s goop lifestyle website, Paltrow acknowledged her failure and the difficulty of surviving on the equivalent of a week’s worth of food stamps.
“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),” Paltrow writes. “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…The food system in our beautiful country needs to be subjected to a heavy revision.” Following her challenge highlighting the inadequacy of the food stamps program, Paltrow goes on to further discuss equal pay for women in the workplace.
The Academy Award winner attempted the challenge with a dozen eggs, a package of corn tortillas, green peas, brown rice, black beans, an avocado, seven limes, a clove of garlic, one tomato, one onion, one yam, an ear of corn, kale, Romaine lettuce, a jalapeno and chives. Although Paltrow was unable to get by on $29, the challenge wasn’t a total loss, producing three “budget-conscious” recipes that she’s posted—black bean taquitos, black bean cakes with grilled corn salsa and brown rice, kale and roasted sweet potato sauté with poached eggs. “A few takeaways from the week were that vegetarian staples like dried beans and rice go a long way,” she writes.
The challenge, which was issued by Food Bank NYC, points out that “Congress has cut food stamps twice since 2013, and soup kitchens and food pantries saw an immediate increase in visitors.”
“I know hunger doesn’t always touch us directly,” Paltrow writes at the end of her update. “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.”
Read more about the Food Bank NYC challenge at foodbanknyc.org.