Fact Check

Gwyneth Paltrow Tried to Survive a Week on Food Stamps and She Died

Rumor: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow starved to death trying to live off of food stamps for a week.

David Mikkelson

Published Jun 8, 2015

Claim:   Actress Gwyneth Paltrow starved to death trying to live off of food stamps for a week.

 

FALSE

 

Example: [Collected via Twitter, June 2015]

 

Origins:   On 8 June 2015, the satirical web site Clickhole published an article reporting that actress Gwyneth Paltrow had starved to death after trying to live off of food stamps for one week:

We all know Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress. But as a lifestyle blogger and humanitarian, Paltrow also uses her fame to try to raise awareness about important issues.For instance, Paltrow recently sought to shed light on the struggle millions of Americans living in poverty face just trying to put food on the table by challenging herself to survive for one whole week on food stamps, and by day five, she was dead.

Yep, the Shakespeare In Love and Iron Man star tried to feed herself on just $29 for an entire week in order to demonstrate just how desperate things are for the nations working poor, and after spending her entire budget on barely enough food to create two healthy, well-balanced meals and a couple of snacks, Paltrow slowly starved to death over the next four days.

 

Clickhole published their satirical article a few months after Paltrow announced that she wanted to "raise awareness and money for the Food Bank for New York City by trying to live on $29 dollars for the week." While it's true that the actress had a difficult time living on the same grocery budget as low-income families utilizing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) commonly known as "food stamps," Paltrow did not "starve to death" as a result:

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.
 

Clickhole, an offshoot of The Onion, is a satirical web site that parodies "clickbait" sites such as Upworthy and BuzzFeed.

 

 

 

Last updated:   8 June 2015

By David Mikkelson

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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