Remember when Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton took the food stamp challenge? Well, now celebrity chef Mario Batali, the Italian-American chef and talk show host, is in the middle of trying to survive on $31 a week for food, and he said last night, “I’m fucking starving.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka the food stamp program, provides about $4.44 per day ($1.48 per meal) to 46 million Americans. Batali said he, his wife and two sons were on day four of the weeklong attempt. He said he had to give up buying organic or pesticide-free or hormone-free food: “The organic word slides out and saves you about 50 percent.” He’s cooked things like lentils with cumin and onions for dinner.

“Rice and beans is in my lunch every day,” Batali, who took the challenge for the Food Bank For New York City. We got a bag of mini gala apples for $3. We bought a pork shoulder roast for $8 and got two and a half meals out of it. I got a whole chicken for $5, but it was spoiled so I had to return it and got a $7 chicken instead. They were out of $5 chickens.”

Batali added, “I thought spare ribs were cheap. Spare ribs this week are $5.95, so I’m making pasta sauce with two pork chops that were $1.39 a pound.” For some context, at Batali’s Manhattan restaurant, Babbo, “Deconstructed Osso Buco for Two” costs $70.

Last month, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a bill with a $4.49 billion cut to SNAP. Batali, who is hoping to bring his Eataly food emporium to the District, is also discussing the challenge on his talk show, The Chew, “We, hopefully, aren’t pretending or being like a bunch of yuppies saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is how you can do it. Look, we can grind our own oats!’ We want people to think about calling and talking to their representation about cuts to the Farm Bill and the food stamp program.”

If you want to see what it’s like to survive on just $4.44 per day, you can take Food Bank for NYC challenge or the SNAP challenge.