{"id":2323,"date":"2007-05-14T12:13:55","date_gmt":"2007-05-14T20:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/05\/eric_youre_not_helping.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T13:01:38","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T18:01:38","slug":"eric_youre_not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/eric_youre_not.html","title":{"rendered":"Eric, You’re Not Helping!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Gioia’s blood sugar spikes, and he feels hungry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Less than one full day into his new diet, Queens Councilman Eric Gioia was riding the No. 4 train on his way home from City Hall when he stared across the aisle and spotted something tempting.<\/p>\n

A fellow straphanger was eating Cheetos.<\/p>\n

“I wanted her snack in the worst way,” said Gioia, who has pledged to live for one week on $28 in groceries — the average food stamp allotment for an individual.<\/p>\n

The hungry Democratic councilman had only eaten an orange and some buttered toast for breakfast, and then two bananas as a snack.<\/p>\n

Citing figures that one in eight New Yorkers live on food stamps, Gioia suspected he wasn’t the only person going hungry on the train.<\/p>\n

“You look around a subway car with 30 or 40 people in it, and do that math,” he said yesterday.<\/p>\n

“The experiment that I am living this week is their life. It changes the way you think.”<\/p>\n

Gioia returned home about 4 p.m. and enjoyed another orange (he’s down to three for the rest of the week) and a sandwich of Key Food white bread and American Accent processed sandwich slices.<\/p>\n

“I ate the cheese sandwich like it was the best meal I had in my life, because I was so hungry,” he said.<\/p>\n

Dinner wasn’t any more appealing.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by family and several office staffers, Gioia heated tomato sauce from a jar and mixed it with pasta and a few cucumber slices.<\/p>\n

“I’m actually concerned I used too much sauce, so I’m putting some back in the jar,” he said after feeding infant formula and two jars of baby food to his daughter, Amelia, who is not living on food stamps.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Councilman, not to be too much of a smart ass, but here’s some stuff we found — on FreshDirect, no less! — that may sate you a little better than processed cheese and Ragu (p.s. several items are even organic<\/em>!):<\/p>\n