Starting Thursday, Americans in five states who get government help paying for groceries will see new restrictions on soda, candy and other foods they can buy with those benefits.
Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah and West Virginia are the first of at least 18 states to enact waivers prohibiting the purchase of certain foods through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
It’s part of a push by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to urge states to strip foods regarded as unhealthy from the $100 billion federal program – long known as food stamps – that serves 42 million Americans.
“We cannot continue a system that forces taxpayers to fund programs that make people sick and then pay a second time to treat the illnesses those very programs help create,” Kennedy said in a statement in December.
Not sure what to think of this one actually
Who decides which SKUs are healthy or not? Can I buy a birthday cake?
Some breakfast cereals or snack bars are just as loaded with sugar as candy. And I’m sure the ban doesn’t include juice either which is not much better than soda. And if the ban is broad enough it might include sugar-free sparkling water.
While soda and candy are really frivolities they’re also not a guaranteed cause of health issues. The ban doesn’t force people to eat lean protein and vegetables or a well-balanced diet in general so this is mostly a play to make SNAP recipients more miserable. Whether that encourages people to work harder to buy their own junk food or steal junk food I don’t think they care.
Or flour, butter, and sugar to make a birthday cake?…
…and if we let them get their hands on unadulterated sugar and butter, who knows what luxuries they could make on their own; hidden from our oversight. Don’t they know they’re poor? Don’t they know their place?
They’re practically making us do this to them…
Should probably ban bottled water, since it’s practically free from the faucet.
Seed oil is unhealthy and should be banned. Only tallow fat.
Organic foods are luxury items with standard counterparts.
Dehydrated milk flakes are a better use of money than expensive liquid milk. (That actually used to be a thing!)
Only store brands are allowed, unless there is none available. A designated overseer must be appointed at each place of business.
Eventually, only vouchers will be provided (again) so that specific items can be purchased. To be considered for the list, please apply at FDA.gov/fat cats.
Yeah that’s the conflicting part. But also Pepsi and Lays don’t seem like a great way to get people fed.
Food is also a part of celebrations and special occasions, not just raw calories in to sustain you. We have enough food to feed people in the US, we don’t need to police how food stamps are spent.
But you’re using an exception to circumvent what it’s about. Feeding people. It’s especially poorer people who enter the vicious cycle of primarily eating easily availible cheap junk food
So go after the companies making the food before it reaches the stores, not the poor people trying to buy food at the store.
But then that wouldn’t let you get your treats, and that’s different, right?
Until we get UBI saddly we should. Theres only so much money for these programs. Anyone who wastes it is then stealing from someone who really needs it.
There’s not an infinite money pot everyone on food stamps gets access to while they’re on it. If you’re given $100 for the month and spend $10 of it on a cake, you don’t get extra to make up for it. You just have to budget the remainder differently. You don’t become less eligible for SNAP because you wanted a cake, and it doesn’t take money from anyone else’s SNAP account. The answer to funding shortfalls is returning the tax rate for the megarich to reasonable levels, not squeezing the poor even harder.
If a person is eligible for food stamps, then it’s paternalistic as hell to cordon off huge swathes of the supermarket from them because it doesn’t match some ideal picture of what you should eat for every single meal—something I would bet 90% of the people in this thread also don’t live up to.
If you’ve never been on food stamps or WIC in a place that polices food choices like that then you genuinely have no idea what a nightmare it makes weekly shopping, because there’s no such thing as a way to implement ‘common sense restrictions’ on what types of foods poor people are allowed to buy without overlooking some dietary need that some people have.
Theres not an infinite pool of money so of course then people should not be wasting it on candy chips and energy drinks. Its not squeezing poor people by not allowing it to be wasted. And i come from a family who used food stamps, and my mother still is so i know. I still bitch at her for wasting it when she has to then get me or my grandfather to buy food for the rest of the month.
I agree completely that snap and wic are needed in the current environment of this god forsaken country. But just giving out 500 dollars a month to spend on anything that isnt hot and fresh doesnt teach people how to spend wisely.
Im not sorry that most people poor and rich are rather stupid, people on government benefits should be restricted on wasting money provided by taxes the same as rich people should be held accountable to pay their fair share.
Consider also: the purpose of SNAP isn’t to ‘fix’ people who are ‘spending wrong.’ It’s to feed people. Thinking the government should enforce the dietary choices of the poor is fucknut crazy.
Cake is not nutrition. I think it should ban all ultra processed Nova class 4 products.
Is butter nutrition? Is flour? Is anything with added sugar automatically ‘not nutrition’?
Allowing poor people to buy the ingredients to make cake but not a cheaper premade cake (or probably a boxed cake mix either under the vibes-based Nova classification system) just makes it so that they have to add even more work to their lives to achieve normalcy for themselves and their kids. Let them buy their kids a birthday cake.
The desire to have total control over every food poor people can buy is nuts. Worry about what you eat. Go into the community and hold free cooking classes if you’re that worried about other people. ‘I’m so worried for you that I’m restricting your choices’ isn’t worry, it’s moralizing.
and its also not like things like this tend to snowball ounce you start no nope never happened
I do, we’re continuing to punish poor people, and it really seems cruelty is the point
Being able to buy junk food instead of actual nutrition with food stamps is a large boon to the junk food industry paid from by tax dollars. Poor people are more likely to buy junk food as well, so not enabling that vice with tax money could be seen as a positive.
On the other hand giving the government powers like this is usually a slippery slope which will get abused more and more in the future.
So instead of holding junk food companies in any way responsible, we are going to make sure that poor can’t get anything enjoyable! Steamed cabbage and leftover meat cuttings is all you’ll get and you’ll like it! Or else you wouldn’t be poor!
Junk food companies could be held responsible by people not being able to purchase their goods in a subsidized way if they aren’t healthy. Thus they make less profit. Whether that actually is what will happen here is doubtful.
You act like junk food is the only thing enjoyable they can get. Naw junk food is a complete waste of money. Ive thought for years it shouldve been restricted, i have known people who blew ALL of their food stamps on shit. Its a government program to feed people, not to induce diabetes.
It betrays a deep lack of education, palate, and kitchen experience in yourself that you equate junk foods to “enjoyable” and that [healthy greens] and [meat] are in any way punishments.
Food deserts and people working multiple jobs, rough sleeping. It’s cruel. Allow them to buy hot prepared meals for a comparable cost or stop harassing them.
Can’t say I disagree with that. My biggest gripe is that it’s mainly poor people who suffer the vicious cycle of bad nutrition from junk food. I think it’s reasonable to say a healthy alternative should be availible before taking away the junk food.
I mean some large convenience stores will sell a 4oz boxed salad for $8-9 or 4 1oz bags of chips for $2. Corporate farms and Frito - Lays both get subsidies. Plus people with bad or no teeth can hold a chip in the mouth until it’s soft. Not so much an apple. Also instant cereal packets of oats or grits cost as much for 8 small packets as a whole 16 oz box – if you only had time, tools and space to cook it.
Recently on my way to work, a convenience store let me get a hot cup of water for my green tea bag for free. A cup of bad coffee was $2. I think most stores charge for the cup of water, though.
To a certain extent, insofar as keeping capitalism is concerned, I think this is a failure of education. These companies supposedly pay taxes too and that money should go to educating the populace on ramifications of choosing, for instance, Doritos.
I think that the better question is why these were allowed in the first place for a supplemental program.
Corporate lobbying, mostly. It’s the reason why whole “genres” of “old” foods are covered (any milk, for example), but the “new stuff” (say probiotic shakes) are on a case-by-case basis. The level of unhealthiness in today’s junk food was almost unheard of when food stamps were started and they’ve only managed to wriggle their way into eligibility as being grandfathered in to the program or lobbying.
If the SNAP program was put in place today, believe that only Tyson Farms chicken and Wonder bread would be allowed.
This is a good explanation.
Its a slippery slope. On the one hand people living at the edge of getting enough calories shouldn’t be filling up on sugar and junk food. On the other the government wont even stop nut jobs from buying firearms but choose to go after these folks first.
Its bad for one everyone should have access to food they need and its not like grocery stores aren’t throwing away junk food with all food waste they are but also until artificially inflated prices of “healthy food” is down its even more gross.
Lifelong leftist, two-time Bernie voter, and I think it’s good. Can’t believe it’s even controversial. Only in America is “you probably shouldn’t eat candy” considered a point of cruelty.
Have you ever used WIC or SNAP in a red state? Because it’s a fucking nightmare to figure out what’s included or excluded. You can have juice, but only certain brands (sugar content irrelevant). Same for yogurt and soy milk but not regular milk, any brand is fine for that. Oh, and only certain brands of whole wheat bread. Doesn’t matter if there’s healthier options that aren’t on the list, or if you can’t eat those things. My siblings literally have to shop with a printout of what brands are okay to get.
Fucking with what food people can spend their food stamps on to match what people think is the most ‘moral’ way to eat doesn’t improve anyone’s life, it just makes shit harder and worse to deal with.
What you’re describing is an effect of the exact corporate lobbying I said we need to get rid of. Set up a clear set of standards across a few types of food defined by near-universally agreed upon science, stop carving out exemptions for big corporate donors and punishing small brands that can’t pay off Congress. If you can’t meet certain standards of nutrition, you’re out. Sorry Little Debbie, but you’ve got to play in the free market now. Good luck! :-)
There’s no reason to bring morality into this when it’s just pure logic that almost every other Western country has come to.
It’s a net negative for everyone the more of this junk we eat.
We shouldn’t encourage it’s consumption (we are here).
We should tax unhealthy items that put a strain on our social systems.
Unhealthy items should be heavily regulated and come with a warning to the public of their health risks. (See: Mexico)
Very unhealthy items allowed today should be banned. (See: The EU’s food regulation)
Do you agree with this? Which part of a junk “food” ban upsets you? Would you support stronger national regulation, maybe a ban? Should SNAP cover raw milk? Should ObamaCare pay for ivermectin treatments? Would you cry if Mountain Dew Red Dye 40 got legislated out of grocery stores? I’m genuinely curious.Is it the fact that it just disqualifies them from SNAP eligibility? People are still more then welcome to buy them privately with their own money, but SNAP is a social support system, a very strained and underfunded one at that. There is zero support to be gained from a Twinkie.
Is that a ‘no, I’ve never used SNAP or WIC in a red state’? The part that upsets me is you’re exclusively targeting poor people by trying to control what they can spend their food stamps on. Deciding that certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ regardless of context is moralizing, even if you don’t call it that. There isn’t any single food that is fine to eat exclusively, and there isn’t any single grocery store food that will kill you if you eat it once. It is fine to eat birthday cake at a birthday party, and anyone that doesn’t want poor people to be able to use food stamps on that is, frankly, a grinch. Food isn’t solely about nutrition, it’s also a part of community and a sense of belonging.
Nutrition is complicated, and anyone acting like there are one size fits all solutions is a scam artist. If you want people to spend their food stamp money on more fruit, veg, and whole grains, then the pressure needs to be on the companies making these foods, not the poor people buying them.
So tax the fucking rich. This is the fakest “leftist” shit I’ve read in my life. You don’t fix a food funding problem by micromanaging the poor.
Food stamps have been regulated since day fucking uno dude. Where were you a year ago? Demanding Congress let you use WIC to buy a Big Mac? Or SNAP for a bottle of Cognac? This is a hill to die on several miles away from the battlefield if you’re this worked up over plastic-wrapped Fudge Rounds being excluded.
Good thing it isn’t SFAP or that would be a convincing argument :-)
Sure it is, but at no point on that chart is “Twinkie” plotted. Some people need more iron in their diet, eat spinach, others need vitamin C, have an orange. But no one needs a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. We’re talking about excluding nutritionally-insignificant trash from a nutrition assistance program. I like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but I’m not including clips of it in my video lecture on depictions of Lustmord in Weimar art.
I agree. So stop subsidizing them through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Do you think exempting Swiss Rolls will have a net-negative impact on Hostess revenue? I do.
Tax the rich, totally, and maybe in 2028 we can start that. But I don’t want to wait to fix SNAP and you play with the hand you’re dealt. In a world where Trump is president and we can have A) Rampant wealth inequality, the guttingn of social safety systems, and Little Debbie gets unlimited free money from the government, or B) rampant wealth inequality, the gutting of social safety systems, but corporations have less opportunity to feed disadvantaged people poison, folk feel some pressure to make healthier purchases at the grocery store, and the SNAP budget can be put towards even healthier options instead of medically-condemned, politically-advantageous hyperprocessed snacks, I’m going with the latter.
Where I live you can spend them on any food that isn’t hot. Sorry about your shithole state.
You actually can use SNAP to buy a Big Mac if you meet certain conditions, which makes sense if you spend five fucking seconds to think about how food stamps are also issued to people without kitchens or even homes. For some people the options really are Big Mac or nothing.
So you want to cooperate with Republicans to restrict what poor people can use food stamps on, and somehow have deluded yourself into believing this is leftist? lmao
Everything you talk about wanting to implement costs money. Who’s analyzing every single food item that comes out on the market and certifying it? Who’s paying for that? How are small businesses going to afford it for every food item they produce? Because that’s a great way to ensure only huge corporations get any money from WIC and food stamps.
The disgust you have for the poor is dripping off every word you type, and it’s gross. If you can’t deal with poor people feeding themselves the ‘wrong’ foods with their food stamps, that’s a personal issue you need to cope with. Especially considering you’ve never even used food stamps in a red state (silence is admission). Try listening to people on food stamps who have dealt with this instead of barging in and declaring you know how to fix their lives better than they do.
You’ve went off the plot here. I’ll bring us back to base: What’s the “N” in SNAP stand for? One word answers only.
Give me your proposal for taxpayer-funded Whoppers. But don’t shit up my nutrition (oops, I gave away the answer) program to pay for it. It really is that simple.
L.
MAO, even
Then take it away from rich people too…
Let’s do it. Shit is poison and I’d love to see it banned across the board like every other developed country, but the US government has neither the infrastructure nor the independent power to do something like that.
or maybe make “healthy” food less artificially expensive? No because that would require actually restructuring society against the rulers you say.
I get a bag of baby carrots for $0.69 from Aldi and munch on it for two days. A bag of Lay’s is 10x that and 90% air.
Amazingly people (not literally) rioted in Seattle over a soda tax until the city made it go away. I can’t wrap my brain around that one.
Americans will do anything before they’ll put ice in a cup at home and drink water
The whole point of foodstamps is to make sure that you have the basics and can eat. When i see people blowing it on nothing but soda and candy it’s like why do you even have them.
Foodstamps are for food, use your own money on the junk instead of the other way around seems simple enough to me. I say that as someone who grew up multiple times homeless family living in the car and had foodstamps most of the time. Spending it on non essentials is stupid
Agreed entirely. Ask someone opposed to these policies (restrictions like this are the standard in almost every other socialist country BTW) what the “N” in SNAP means.
If you consider SNAP/Food Stamps/Nutritional support as a form of social investment, meaning that we all turn out ahead in the long run when people aren’t starving, how can you even think that candy, ultra-processed junk foods, soda, etc. is appropriate? Things that have no nutritional value whatsoever and are unanimously condemned by medical experts for having a net-negative impact on a person’s health? There is nothing to be gained whatsoever in consuming these types of things, neither individually nor as a culture.
The people on SNAP programs make up some of the country’s most disadvantaged and under educated. The junk food mega corporations have lobbied for decades to keep their poison SNAP-eligible for no reason other than profiteering and exploitation. There is zero gain.
SCAP next?
SOGAP after that?
Hell, why don’t we skip the wait and just legislate SBTTHAP (Supplemental Bullet to the Head Assistance Program) today.
You guys are REALLY going all in on ignoring the “and other foods” part. Since they’re not all listed in the article, who’s to say that the kakistocratic governments of the five states didn’t also ban nutritionally valid foods that they disapprove of for conspiracy theory and/or policy reasons?
Besides, there’s many so-called food deserts in those states: areas where fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce if not completely unavailable. Banning everything else effectively amounts to starving the people forced bt poverty to live in any of those areas.
This isn’t about helping poor people eat healthier. It’s about controlling what they can and cannot buy while paying less money to keep them alive.
What does the “N” in SNAP stand for?
Nutrition. I already adressed that.
You have to make up hypothetical scenarios to be upset about then. “What if they do this other thing!?!?” Then I’ll be upset about it. But the conversation between me and the other guy was about ultra-processed, nutritionally-irrelevant, health-adverse snacks (I don’t even call them food) from being excluded from SNAP benefits.
Yes or no, do you think they should be included?
There’s nothing hypothetical about food deserts. They DO exist and the people living there ARE disproportionately on SNAP and/or similar programs and unable to move away due to poverty
Or pretend that it isn’t real, apparently 🙄
Which is pretty myopic considering that there’s no proof that those are the only ones banned.
Given that they’re the least bad option available to some people, making the alternative to not eat at all, yes.
While healthy food is better than unhealthy food, unhealthy food is better than no food at all.