Gwyneth Paltrow cheats on her challenge to live on $29 per week. Grades herself a generous C-

Turns out that the Goop lifestyle isn’t for everyone. Who knew?

Update

After entering into the $29 Food Bank Challenge with much fanfare (and little else, calorie-wise), Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted that she failed, eating chicken, vegies and half a bag of liquorice to supplement the $29 worth of groceries she purchased for the week.

Lady Goop has awarded herself a generous C- for her efforts. Well, she gave it a red-hot go, right? I mean, four days is more than half a week!

“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,” Paltrow wrote on Goop.

She spent $24.40 (no word on why she didn’t spend the whole $29) on foods including avocados and limes, which she noted are inexpensive in Southern California.

Paltrow says her failure at the challenge highlighted for her the importance in wage equality for women.

Related: Does Gwyneth Paltrow eat cookies? Tracy Anderson says no.

“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,” she wrote, adding that the pay gap is even greater for Latina and black women.

So, OK, she failed. But Gwyneth has used her privileged position to try and start a conversation that people in power in the U.S. really need to have, and that’s got to count for a bit of a win.

“Let’s all do what we can to make this a basic human right and not a privilege,” she wrote on Goop.

That’ll do, Gwyn. That’ll do.

Mamamia previously wrote….

So, how many goji berries CAN you buy for $29?

The woman whose weekly grocery list includes such staples as quail eggs, goji berries and fields of kale – and whose butt is self-described as resembling that of a 22-year-old stripper – has accepted the challenge to live for a week as millions of Americans do, on a $29 food budget.

Gwyneth “I’d rather die than let my kids eat Cup-a-Soup'” Paltrow, 42, accepted the #FoodBankNYCChallenge from celeb chef and friend Mario Batali, who is also a NYC Food Bank board member.

The challenge is designed to raise awareness of hunger in New York City, where 1.7 million people live on SNAP, or food stamps. That figure is 46.3 million country-wide. Batali is lobbying to prevent Congress from making further cuts to food benefits and is enlisting his rich and famous friends, including Sting and Debbie Harry, to live like poors for a whole week.

Paltrow announced her participation in the challenge on Twitter last Thursday, posting a picture of the food she bought on the strict budget, which works out to just US$1.38 per meal. The actress and lifestyle guru, a sufferer of sensitivities to various food groups including dairy and gluten, plus ‘bad’ fruit and veg including eggplants, strawberries and tomatoes, was able to afford a wholesome-looking grocery haul of grains, eggs, leafy greens and dried legumes.

Participants in the challenge are allowed to use coupons but aren’t allowed to use donated foods or items they already have in their pantries, and while Paltrow’s shopping bag looks extremely healthy, many people have pointed out it’s unlikely to stretch to three meals a day for a whole week.

It looks like it’s going to be a very lean Sunday in the Paltrow household – which is really the whole point of the challenge. How does the average person feed themselves and their dependents on $29 (per person) per week?

The mother-of-two, whose lucky daughter Apple (not a ‘bad’ fruit, apparently) was recently treated to a vegan birthday party, is often divisive with her outrageous pronouncements on how easy it is to be thin and healthy with the butt of a 22-year-old stripper while simultaneously recommending $10 jars of probiotic honey and proclaiming she’d rather “smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin”.

Read more: Gwyneth Paltrow went all out for her son’s birthday party.

Her weekly menu, though, has already been criticised for its almost total lack of fats or calories. With no meat or fish, no dairy and hardly any fats, the diet will mean Paltrow survives on a meagre amount of calories per day – something the average person, particularly a low-wage earner who might do physical labour, couldn’t do.

She’s also included seven (count ’em) limes and a bunch of coriander – money that could arguably be better spent on a couple of litres of whole milk, some cheese, or a bag of ‘bad’ potatoes.

The Oscar-winner has now nominated celebrity chef Roi Choi to take up the food challenge.

Paltrow’s previous dilemmas include ‘finding the balance between tofu and cigarettes’ and how to consciously uncouple. Here’s hoping she overcomes this one in her usual Goopy fashion.

Click through the gallery below of Gwyneth Paltrow being classic Gwyneth Paltrow.