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 ...
Exactly, in some areas the ebt cards are used to buy vast quantities of sodas and in turn the soda is sold for way less than market value for cash from crooked proprietors for cash to buy drugs. There is one small market in my community that you can barely walk through because of all the cases of sodas. A year or so ago my brother was near that market and it was hot and he wanted a cold drink and he stopped in.
In the past this market had great sandwiches and service and he didn’t know it had been sold. He said it was stacked with sodas everywhere. He got his mt. Dew fix and left asap. Six months ago the store was raided and the owner charged with EBT card fraud and running a prostitution ring .
I have seen shopping carts full of steaks and prime groceries and paid for with food stamps. The poor are “always going hungry “ according to the Libs but 99% of these porkers could stand to use some weight especially the so called children going hungry.
Back in another life, I had a boyfriend who was a contracter and he refurbished welfare housing in the cities (upstate NY).
Every month little black kids came around and sold the stamps for 50 cents or so on the dollar.
Tax money should never be used to pay for housing, food or medical care for any American who isn’t in the armed forces. Non-citizens should not only be unsubsidized, they should have to pay double. If bad choices had real consequences, fewer people would make them.
Same here. I was on a home visit and found nothing but a couple beers in the fridge and nothing in the pantry. Also found a customer doing his best to hide under the covers. The house was a disaster health and structural wise. Told the mama I’d be back at 3 pm and there better be some changes or else. It was hilarious driving by watching what I’m guessing were her regulars bringing in bags of groceries and repairing the hole in the porch, rehanging the front door and putting new screens on the windows. They were doing such a great job, I waited around until 5 before stopping in again and the place was transformed. Hey, for real, it was for the children. Amazing what lighting a tiny little fire under their lazy butts can accomplish.
The meme here is Food Nazis on the Left and the Right trying to dictate people’s eating habits.
None of their effin’ business. Government takes away too much of our freedom already.
I don’t like the idea of people in our country starving and dying, but if I could wave my magic wand, I’d arrange things differently.
If you feed people and allow them to be comfortable enough to reproduce, won’t you get more dependent people? How is this a good long term goal?
I’d like to have charity soup kitchens for the momentary poor, places where they’d notice if you were coming for more than a few weeks and step in. I’d like anyone homeless with mental or other health reasons who literally could not work to be placed even against their will into charity run closed communities (institutions but more like a little village) where they could be safe and medicated and have a life.
And I’d like some industries, from factories to farming, to accept American day labor for someone who wants to work for 2 hots and a cot. (In my world there would be no illegal aliens.)
And if you don’t have a reason you can’t work, and no one in your family can feed you, you must go and do SOME kind of work in order to eat. It is actually kinder to insist on self reliance, to make people’s lives so unpleasant they die without reproduction, unless they show some effort to work. Children who are neglected to the point of starvation need to be removed from their parents.
Parents need to maybe see a kid die of starvation to wake them up when a penis is heading their way, enough to actually not have sex. Like the song “Love Child” by Diana Ross. She wouldn’t have sex with her guy, not that she didn’t love him. But she didn’t want her child to be mocked and dressed in rags like SHE had been. It was a controversial song at the time. Bastard used to mean more than jerk.
Now, who cares? You have a kid, there is free day care, two free meals at school (breakfast even includes a parent...watch how the parent comes in and eats off the child’s heaping plate, takes a bunch of it with her after), what’s the big deal? Unprotected sex all the time, kids don’t cost anything.
Sad to think of people starving and dying. But what is GOOD about freely feeding a dependent class of human beings that CANNOT have our backs ever? I hope my tax dollars go to supporting all of us who truly are helpless. But there is a whole class of able bodied who are not being fair citizens.
You want freedom, then don’t take the taxpayers’ money.
Yeah I completely avoid the stores on the first week of the month. The 350+ pounders come out of the woodwork to ride the rascals whilst swiping their newly filled EBT card.
Wow we are angry when school lunches are dictated to our children by Moochelle. Why should we dictate what these people eat? Let them eat and drink what they want. With that being said,this number could be much higher in places where taxes for soda are much higher. Stand alone metrics don’t mean anything when nottaken into the context of total amount of cart, what other items were bought at the same time etc. If we are going to get angry at what our government dicttes to our children what they can or cannot eat,we are being hypocrites when we do the same for those on food stamps. The hope is they will purchase healthy food. That is an individual choice we should not be making for them.
Hopefully, the new administration will be able to roll back food stamps so that they can only be used for nourishing food. I know WIC does it. You can only buy cereal, milk, etc.
I’ve told the story on here about a woman who was dressed very nicely who was at a register buying packaged fruit (washed and cut up). She used an EBT card while saying that this kind of fruit was the only type her son would eat. I was like, what? I can’t afford to buy prepackaged fruit! I buy fruit and wash and cut it myself. I was glad she wasn’t buying junk, but this was just anecdotal evidence that the food stamp program has gotten out of hand.
The worst is the junk food and restaurant usage by food stamp participants; that should be eliminated and only whole foods should be allowed to be “purchased”. As a taxpayer, I would even accept the allowance of prepackaged fruit. At least people would be eating healthier.
This IS the way it used to be I had a friend in HS her family was very poor, I went with them one day to get their food, it was a warehouse where they were given blocks of cheese, flour, powdered milk, beans, rice, ect. I think she told me that they went twice a week during certain hours after going there with her I had her to my house for dinner OFTEN we became very good friends!!! It USED to be embarrassing for people to be on food assistance but those days are LONG GONE!!!!
Because they have no choice but to go to school. Going on welfare/food stamps is a choice.
In the summer, those kids get lunch delivered by a van that stops around town at the park, library, etc. Anyone up to 21 years old can eat (I had a BS degree and a real job by 20). More tax dollars down the drain. You’re right, add in those extra meals and they get way more than your grocery budget.
The government does. Knew someone who signed up for food stamps and after two months had a good paying job. The government wouldn't let them off welfare until the end of 6 months.
Home made popcorn was our treats...and ice cream
They have found a way to make the poorest the most obese. It’s a big reason why I think we are probably a long way away from any sort of widespread public unrest or civil uprising. Harder to take to streets when you are not only well fed but also carrying an extra 100 lbs.
Freegards
Wann’a bet they are paying full price? Why bother with a coupon when someone else is paying?
I wonder is sugary drinks exceeds exchanging the stamps, for cash in order to buy drugs and alcohol?
We never got rid of welfare under Clinton. We just started calling it "disability" and made sure every real and imagined ailment under the sun was covered.
Before they had swipe cards, you could tell who was paying with food stamps. Lots of folks were infuriated to see people in line ahead of them buying junk food and luxury, expensive items with food stamps. Meanwhile working people had to clip coupons, buy store brands or sale items, cook from scratch, or do without.
It was also common to see someone paying with food stamps, then walking out to the parking lot and getting into a luxury car. Though it was considered mean and judgmental to point that out.
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