Posted on 11/10/2013 4:30:29 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
McAllen, Tex. — They were already running late for a doctor’s appointment, but first the Salas family hurried into their kitchen for another breakfast paid for by the federal government. The 4-year-old grabbed a bag of cheddar-flavored potato chips and a granola bar. The 9-year-old filled a bowl with sugary cereal and then gulped down chocolate milk. Their mother, Blanca, arrived at the refrigerator and reached into the drawer where she stored the insulin needed to treat her diabetes. She filled a needle with fluid and injected it into her stomach with a practiced jab.
“Let’s go,” she told the children, rushing them out of the kitchen and into the car. “We can stop for snacks on our way home.”
The family checkup had been scheduled at the insistence of a school nurse, who wanted the Salas family to address two concerns: They were suffering from both a shortage of nutritious food and a diet of excess — paradoxical problems that have become increasingly interconnected in the United States, and especially in South Texas.
For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp benefits, adding lard to thicken her refried beans and buying instant soup by the case at a nearby dollar store. She shopped for “quantity over quality,” she said, aiming to fill a grocery cart for $100 or less.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp ..
Would you call that support the mother’s or the people?
And what about the car? Poor people who have to work are usually fairly well in shape. Same for walking. We did both as children during WWII and never had health problems.
I’m all for helping people, but when you relieve them of responsibility you have harmed them.
Bump!
When you subsidize something you get more of it. These kids learn from her and she learned from her mother and... All these do-gooders are doing is crippling generations of what could have been productive - self-sufficient people.
Let Moosechele and Mikey head a commission to determine which specific food items are eligible for purchase with public assistance funds. This assistance is in the form of debit cards these days, and even the smallest convenience store has a scanner at the check out. The systems can be programmed to accept or reject purchases based on a master list of "approved" items.
Limiting what these debit cards can purchase may also reduce their value as drug or sex barter.
Then we can see how well their policies work (or don't) on that group.
The point is, it isn’t necessarily the amount of food, it’s the kind of food—high sugar content foods cause obesity.
Absolutely, $4.50/day you can get 2000 calories of quality food (boring but healthy). If the story is even mostly true we are doomed.
Laziness causes poor diet. Poor people have poor ways.
They're more easily controlled when you remove responsibility (and their kids pick up those habits, the lifestyle - productive lives become depressed lives). Then working citizens are repeatedly told that they are greedy and need to fork over more of their money (to keep Democrat welfare voters going to the polls and pulling D).
I’m a big proponent of states taking a lead in this, to achieve a win-win. That is, the economics of farming is harsh, and having too good a year can wipe them out, by driving prices down.
But if states buy up some of the surplus, it helps its farmers tremendously. Storing it is very expensive, so it is cheaper to give it away to food stamp recipients as a seasonal “bonus”. This is also a big bonus nutritionally, because while it is not their first choice in food, which is often junk, they may eat it if it is free.
In practice, say there is a bumper crop of apples one year. Along with their food stamps they get a dozen apples that don’t count against their stamps. Though some refuse to eat apples and would throw them out or give them away, many would eat them, just because they have them and they’re free.
Farmers benefit, stores get rid of surplus inventory so have more stable prices, food stamp recipients get some better nutrition than just what they choose. And the total cost is probably offset by stabilizing farm prices, which produces larger tax revenues by minimizing losses.
It wouldn’t take much for the gov’t to require food stamps be used for fresh fruit, veggies, whole grains and no sodas, no sugary cereals, no cookies and chips- but they know there would be a revolt.
Seriously. Many of these people don’t work. They certainly have the time to use their welfare sponsored flour to make bread in their welfare sponsored apartment while their chirrens are at the gov’t sponsored schools eating welfare breakfast and welfare lunches.
Their job can be to be a good parent.
You make sense but the article tells us:
....”For more than half an hour, Canales listened to their concerns about his bill and another proposed by a lawmaker who wanted to eliminate candy and chips: Should government really be in the position of telling adults what to eat? And if so, who would be trusted to sort through the 40,000 items sold in a typical grocery store and divide healthy from unhealthy? If energy drinks were banned, why not also ban canned iced coffee that has twice the caffeine and triple the sugar? Or Sunny D fruit drink? Or Gatorade? Or fruit punch? And once every product had been rated and sorted, what if some grocery stores decided it was easier not to accept food stamps at all? Or what if food-stamp recipients felt too stigmatized to shop?”...
QUIT BREEDING! START WORKING!
or just go home....
I agree 100%.
My mother-in-law told me of an incident involving her mother and a neighbor (this problem is not a new). The neighbor let it be known that times were hard for her and that they didn’t have enough to eat. My mother-in-law described how her mother took flour, lard - all the ingredients to make bread over to this woman, who’s response was, “What am I supposed to do with this?” To which she was told, “Bake your own bread” (As she did - daily!). It was the last time she gave that woman any help.
Here in NH you can use your EBT card at MacDonalds, Burger King & Taco Bell. So forget the healthy food. Until we take away those perks, nothing will change.
I take issue with the assertion in the article that it’s cheaper to buy packaged, pre-processed food than it is to buy fresh.
That’s just not true. Pound for pound, it’s much cheaper to buy fresh and un-processed foods. But you also have to be willing to put some time into preparation.
One of the issues is lack of motivation and discipline. Another is that carbohydrates are addictive. You crave them and they don’t satisfy for long.
Speaking of generational, a social worker told me that a 6 year old child of a client of hers asked the social worker if, when she grew up, she would please be her case worker. The State is just a part of these peoples’ lives, cradle to grave. This is normalcy to them.
What’s lacking is intelligence and discipline.
Notice how the leftist ‘helping’ industry reframes the idea that government-funded food should be minimalistically nutritious as limiting the freedom of those living off it?
A lot of it is ignorance and laziness. It is far easier to eat carbs than actually cook.
I’d like to see every family mailed a sample menu each month along with their food stamp deposit to give them an idea how to cook and eat well.
Soups and stews are simple, filling and nutritious. You can hide a lot of cheap kale, legumes and green beans in a good soup or stew. Oatmeal, cream of wheat, or any hot cereal is cheap and very good for you. Kids will eat if you make the food taste good. It takes a little time and talent which can be learned.
I’ve seen this time and time again that people do not nor do they want to cook. They have to be encouraged to do this well.
There is nothing wrong with a rice and bean burrito as long as it isn’t slathered with lard.
If people would just do simple things. Buy bags of apples, carrots and celery and have at home.
I made a great stir fry last night with just chicken breast, celery, carrots and some cashews.
It was very simple, quick and didn’t cost a lot. It is easy and inexpensive to eat healthy food.
Their poor diets are due to the fact they can buy chips, cookies, candy, soda, energy drinks, cake, etc. And they buy a ton of those products.
None of which have a thing to do with nutrition. They are JUNK FOOD.
That is why this last generation of a long line of food stamp generations is the MOST FAT in history.
After they buy all this garbage junk food they then get cash back and by cigs, loto cards and booze.
Insist they use manufacture coupons to reduce the cost of REAL FOOD to make their food stamp $$ go further.
I’d much rather pay for TP, bar soap, and laundry soap, than for junk food. But the pit fall there is that they would just sell those items at below cost to their homeies.
Remove their right to buy these items, and NO CASH BACK and see how fast they go look for a job.
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