Posted on 11/09/2025 4:40:07 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Acorn squash, Spam and baby food lined the shelves on a recent day at a college food pantry in California’s capital city, a resource that students receiving federal aid to purchase groceries may have to increasingly rely on because that assistance has been in limbo during the government shutdown.
Hundreds of students at California State University, Sacramento, or Sac State, visit the school’s Basic Needs Resource Center every week, where they can select up to a dozen items per trip — ranging from fresh produce and meat to toiletries and secondhand clothes.
“It’s a big blessing,” said Antonette Duff, a junior studying psychology at the university who’s enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.
More than 3,600 students at the college of roughly 31,000 receive aid through SNAP, said Emily Tupper, the college’s director of Crisis Assistance and Resource Education Support. More than 200,000 college students in California and 1.1 million nationwide are on SNAP, according to the state’s Department of Social Services and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, respectively.
Many students are facing tuition and housing bills, juggling classes, and often working lower paying part-time jobs that make it difficult to afford groceries, with prices on the rise.
“It just puts students in a really horrible position,” said Mike Hannigan, a student at Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts and an advocate against food insecurity on college campuses.
Hannigan receives just under $300 a month from SNAP, but the benefits didn’t come through at the beginning of November due to government delays.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
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WHY? Why are college students on Food Stamps???!!! I never was.
There’s always socialism-looking more attractive since they don’t have Biden to forgive their loans.
I wonder what the DNC’s Hamas wing brings to the table.
Just see your “Peace Studies or Womens Studies profs for help
Going into debt with college loans
Living on Food Stamps
Majoring in weak fields like psychology
No bright futures here.
Free Food and Health care for people who earned nothing.
That’s what college endowments are for.
The article says all that need be said about both the writer and the ‘kollege’ students. (Mostly studies majors, obviously.) We’ll not talk about the ‘kolleges’ charging for joke degrees.
“Hannigan receives just under $300 a month from SNAP”
For an adult to eat the food my mother prepared would cost about half that.
SNAP benefits should be capped at $2.50/day/person, increasing as the CPI does.
Benefits paid in daily instead of monthly to prevent binge eating disorder.
“Binge eating disorder (BED)...can lead to significant health issues, including:
Obesity and related conditions (e.g., type 2 diabetes, heart disease)
Mental health problems (e.g., depression, anxiety)
Poor quality of life and social functioning”
Do those symptoms sound and look familiar?
Paying SNAP benefits in monthly lumps is unhealthy.
SNAP benefits would pay for things WIC does, excluding fish but including chicken and pork.
That's terrible. No college students ever had to deal with anything like that before now.
Let them eat Top Ramen.
Or get full-time jobs while studying part-time.
I never once had to do that either! Yes, I was buying little tins of spaghetti sauce and boxes of spaghetti for all my meals at one point...or going to the salad bar and eating a massive salad that would tide me over for a day or two...never once would I have stooped to food stamps.
I feed a family of 6 for less than that
“WHY? Why are college students on Food Stamps???!!! I never was.”
Same here. I worked during the school year and summers. I also paid off my college loans within two years of graduating. The same for my kids. There is no reason for any college student to rely on government assistance or to default on student loans.
I remember having plain white bread with mayonnaise and a slice of tomato as a meal, for weeks on end. I couldn’t afford any meat.
GET A JOB ALREADY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SNAP should be limited to:
1. fresh produce
2. canned veggies
3. basic process pork & chicken
4. basic process dairy & cheese < $5/pound
5. dried legumes
6. wheat flour, pasta, rice
7. tomato sauces < 20 cents an ounce
Note for $28 (a weekly $2/day amount for two people), one can buy:
two pounds of chicken for ~$5,
four pounds of pasta for ~$4,
seven cans of vegetables for ~$5,
a gallon of milk for ~$3,
two loaves of bread for ~$3, and
a box of cereal (or a bag of fruit) for ~$3,
and still have ~$5 left over for say buying
a 10-pound bag of potatoes one week, or
a bag of sugar and 100 tea bags another week, or
a pound of butter and two boxes of store brand macaroni & cheese another week, or
12 eggs and two boxes of cake mix yet another week.
That could be an option too. My dad worked full-time (and sometimes more) while going through pre-med in three years, back in the early 1940s, because he had to support his widowed mother and his younger brother.
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