Posted on 01/15/2017 7:12:22 AM PST by Drew68
What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store?
The answer was largely a mystery until now. The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74 billion food stamp program called SNAP, has published a detailed report that provides a glimpse into the shopping cart of the typical household that receives food stamps.
The findings show that the No. 1 purchases by SNAP households are soft drinks, which accounted for 5 percent of the dollars they spent on food. The category of ‘sweetened beverages,’ which includes fruit juices, energy drinks and sweetened teas, accounted for almost 10 percent of the dollars they spent on food. “In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “It’s pretty shocking.”
For years, dozens of cities, states and medical groups have urged changes to SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to help improve nutrition among the 43 million poorest Americans who receive food stamps. Specifically, they have called for restrictions so that food stamps cannot be used to buy junk food or sugary soft drinks.
But the food and beverage industries have spent millions opposing such measures, and the U.S.D.A. has denied every request, saying that selectively banning certain foods would be unfair to food stamp users and create too much red tape.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good point; also, the violence of the French and Bolshevik revolutions was spurred by hunger - so we’ve basically bought off our unproductive people with food aplenty.
Thanks for reminding me...I have to throw the saved Christmas ham bone, water, onions, garlic, dry split peas and seasonings in the crock pot! Got me a hankerin' for some pea soup!
Just like they did in WWII. Ration stamps for certain items. No stamp — no buy!
That is what happens when people breed for freebies; there is no love, nurturing, or work involved with raising children. NYC exposed this when they announced they’d continue the school free lunch program over the summer; they have no expectation that ghettopotamuses will feed their bastards.
I think you ought to look further. Every home town grocery store that has been forced to close is because a WalMart came in and underpriced them greatly.
I have never seen anyone shop lift food though I have heard many do that.
If mapquest went down, snowflakes couldn’t drive across town these days.
Capable and smart girls. Ever see the winnings kids get in livestock competitions? You’d need a covered wagon to haul your winnings.
Have you priced retail MREs lately? They're not cheap!
Food stamp program should be scraped and the feds should send the recipients a box of food once a month with proper food.
At the end of the month, they’d give the excess cheese and stuff to anyone who wanted it. THE BEST CHEESE EVER!
The school would get government peanut butter (before anyone had allergies). There would be some form of peanut butter on every tray - a big fresh made pb cookie, a pb jelly sandwich for later, an apple with a blob of pb, a little Dixie cup of government pb and government honey for your fresh made from scratch hot yeast roll that was to die for, etc.
So you would be against making homosexuals pay more for health insurance? They have and spread more expensive to treat diseases.
Time to go back to food rationing like was done during WWII. Eliminate many “luxury” type items off the “free sh&t” list the gibsmedats are allowed to take home at our expense.
As a kid, I remember going to the store with small red and blue plastic like “coins” to make actual “legal” purchases of certain items such as sugar, meat, etc., we also had small booklets of rationing stamps similar to postage stamps. You didn’t get more than your share, it was definitely closely controlled. I suppose that would be considered racist in todays world.
I love them too! But can’t have them in the house. I would consume an entire bag in one sitting.
I wonder if SNAP covers the soda tax some cities have passed.
Companies like that are huge beneficiaries of the EBT program. They probably don't want anyone to know how much tax money they reap via redistributive programs.
“””” Among non-SNAP households, for example, soft drinks ranked second on the list of food purchases, behind milk.”””
I wonder how many people realize how much sugar is in milk?
In this age of computerization it would be easy to tag the price data base and make certain food items ineligible.
Perhaps we should stop paying for any pre-mixed or cooked food. Make these folks bake their own junk food.
I know my kids always liked my chocolate chip cookies to the store bought.
To be fair, nobody is telling poor people they can't eat junk food. The objection is using food stamps to pay for it.
Now this is where the issue becomes far more complicated than simply, "poor people buy junk food with EBT."
The biggest supporters of government food assistance aren't just the poor people using it but the large companies who are in the business of food production and distribution. The example I used above; why should company (A) be able to sell their products to people with food stamps but not Company (B)? And from here, we can get into the ugly business of subsidies paid to Big Agriculture that, some years, might allow for up to 1/3 of all the food grown in the United States to spoil in order to keep prices stable. Additionally, we have tariffs that demand we pay more for products like sugar.
So it comes down to a lot of tax money being used in the production, distribution and consumption of food as well as tax money being used to allow food to rot. It's really a big complicated mess with a lot of people, not just the poor, who are the recipients of government largesse.
Don’t stop them. Fat criminals run slow.
It’s hard to imagine any sort of sustained uprising under the conditions here in the US for sure. We have achieved something that has never happened before in all of recorded history, at least to my understanding: the poorest are also the fattest. It’s like something out of Gulliver’s Travels.
And yes, the various food programs are a big component, but not being on public assistance and just being poor is also a component when the cheapest food available is usually processed unhealthy food.
Freegards
I remember about 2 years ago, NYC had a record blizzard and cold snap. My car was plowed in, so I had to take 3 different buses, each with a wait time of an hour, to get to and from school. Why did the retard DeBlASSio not close the schools that day? There were travel warnings, school buses were seen skidding, you couldn't cross the street without falling. Did they not close the schools so that any education could go on? NOPE. The Alzheimers poster child school chancellor, besides declaring it a "beautiful day", said that the schools were being kept open "Because that might be the only hot meal our students get." Oh. Mom too busy to heat up a can of soup? Teachers had to risk their lives (I sustained frostbite on my face) to get to school because Mama couldn't rouse her pathetic self to provide a hot meal for her kid? No wonder they are on welfare and will be on welfare for the foreseeable future. With that level of initiative, they'd be dead if their autonomic nervous system didn't tell their lazy hearts to beat or their lungs to breathe in.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.