Texas bill to ban food stamps for junk food (gallon, California, percentage)

[Mikala43]

Originally Posted by 2mares

And I can post links refuting it.
Correlation does not imply causation.

It also does not prove the opposite.

I think if there is a question about the issue and the possibility of poverty/SNAP contributing to obesity then it should be looked at. This is a segment that can least afford to have health problems and get treatment.

I'm a huge whole food, home made food, nutrient dense food proponent. I think classes should be given to SNAP recipients on nutrition and cooking, to better use their benefits.

But as brought up, there are food deserts, and I certainly would not want to have some one go hungry because of regs meant to help.

These things are always very complicated, and have to looked at from a variety of angles.

I do not think that anyone in our country should go hungry, ever.

[mco65]

Originally Posted by branDcalf

I'm okay with this. On the other hand, I hate more regs. But, still, if one wants junk food tax payers shouldn't be on the hook for it.

When I was super poor, I bought chips three times a year as a treat for the kids. We still hardly eat that stuff.

Exactly. I mean, who gets to decide what is junk food and what is not.. Some might think a hot dog is junk food... some might not. How is a hot dog much different than a bologna sandwich. Surely we not going to keep Food Stampers from buying bologna.. ???

Besides, doesn't a 5 year old deserve a candy bar once in a blue moon just because he is a kid... I highly doubt that food stamp recipients are blowing their stamps on purely junk food.. at least not a large percentage.

[Mikala43]

Originally Posted by Daryl_G

A plausible answer and According to Occam's Razor, the most likely is: Junk food is cheap. You need to fill a home with $500 bucks for a month, cheap junk is how you do it.

The correlation between Poverty and Obesity is strong regardless of food stamp use. Those that qualify for food stamps are close or below poverty levels, therefore the correlation lines better with Poverty and not Food Stamp use alone.

Ill spell it out again:
In other words, the food that a poor person buys is directly related to the COST of the food, not the type. Hence, poor people buy junk because junk is cheaper than good food. A change in buying habits would require a change in pricing or forced government intervention (as in this Texas bill) because it goes against basic economic principles simple enough for a child to understand.

This seems like an easy concept. This is exactly how this very question would be asked on the SAT test given to high schoolers around the country. In other words your high school children already understand this concept if they are going to college.

I agree and disagree.

Cheap, EASY and designed to appeal to our tasted buds (and not nutrition). In addition, stability is a factor. That ramen you can stock up on and not worry about for years. Cooking up the veggies need to happen pretty quick, and your schedule may not allow for that.

Beans are cheaper than fast food. Rice is cheaper than fast food.

If cost were the only factor, the poor would be eating those, AND be a lot healthier.

[middle-aged mom]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

No kidding, I used to live in a toney part of Reno, most of the local residents shopped at the same grocery store and I would be surprised if 1% were SNAP recipients but if you were going to decide who was getting food stamps because of junk food purchases you would have thought they all were. I recall one lady pushing two carts full of soda and garbage food through the checkout line, when she was done I sort of rolled my eyes at the cashier who said "yeah I know and she's a pediatrician and has 3 kids of her own"

Local grocery chain has 4 cases of soda ( all major brands) on sale for $10, this week. This happens about once a quarter. Consumers stock up. Common to see people with 2 carts of soda in the check out lanes. The local store sells thousands of cases during the sale. SNAP is not prevalent in my neck of the woods.

[crone]

Perhaps the snap recipients are just buying the stuff they learned to eat from the years of school lunches. Nuggets, pizza and tatter tots. Every school my kids attended their whole public school careers had soda machines. Now soda is bad, so they are filled with sugar water drinks.

Most school lunches are high fat, high carb and sugar empty calories.

[Daryl_G]

Originally Posted by Mikala43

I agree and disagree.

Cheap, EASY and designed to appeal to our tasted buds (and not nutrition). In addition, stability is a factor. That ramen you can stock up on and not worry about for years. Cooking up the veggies need to happen pretty quick, and your schedule may not allow for that.

Beans are cheaper than fast food. Rice is cheaper than fast food.

If cost were the only factor, the poor would be eating those, AND be a lot healthier.

Lets take a look at that option and match food for "food like product" commonly purchased:
Beans alone are cheap, Rice alone is cheap, but how many American diets consistent of Rice or beans alone? Hardly any, and I would argue that a diet of rice and beans is just as bad as a diet of ramen daily. All carbohydrates with high glycemic indexes, still riding the diabetes train to no foot nation.


A more realistic look at that situation is:
Person buys Beans, Rice, A meat, vegetables for a total of $10-15 (I am keeping this low). That encompasses one meal that could last 2-3 days.


The savings is minimal compared to ready to eat, stick in the oven stuff like a family sized Stouffers Lasagna, 12 servings that last days, $11.00. That does not account for the difference in preparation time. Now I know that Lasagna does not look like junk food but read that package label and you will see just how much salt, carbs, calories per serving. Remember we package junk all kinds of ways, doesn't have to be chips or cookies that cause obesity. Which is why I wonder how they will categorize "Junk".


Just a realistic look, even if cost were equal, people will pick the 30 min meal, not the boil beans all day option. Remember food stamp recipients do work, have kids to tend to ect. The cost of the food would need to make it worth the time to avoid the junk.

[Mikala43]

I can do a pot of 15 bean chili, comes with seasonings add ground beef, for $5. It will make about 10 servings. I can have it ready in an InstaPot in under an hour, and most of that is cooking time, not prep.

It is also a great "garbage can" for any left over OR fresh veggies, or even canned. Expanding the nutrition and servings.

Much healthier for you than a highly processed lasagna.

[Ohiogirl81]

Originally Posted by crone

Is the purpose of SNAP to provide life sustaining nutritious food for people? Who defines nutritious?

Technically, the ultimate purpose of SNAP - which lies under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture - is to increase the market for farmers.

Originally Posted by thecoalman

You don't define junk food, you define what is acceptable. Fresh meat, fish, vegetable, fruits etc. Anything canned or boxed you limit to vegetables, spaghetti, rice, flour etc. You also put a cost per pound limit on things, e.g. if you want beef you shouldn't be able to buy fillet Mignon unless you are getting good deal on it.

That'll f up the cashiers' lines, all right ...

Originally Posted by thecoalman

Firstly the number one purchase for food stamps is soda, 5%. When you add other sugary drinks like ice tea it's 10%. Furthermore I don't know where you are shopping but I can certainly provide some very good meals far below the cost of processed meal.

Source? I am skeptical.

Originally Posted by Tritone

They should ban luxury food items too.

Who defines "luxury"? Can you? Is your definition of "luxury" the same as everyone else's? What if it isn't? How do you decide?

Originally Posted by in_newengland

I do not like punishing people for being poor and to make them suffer. I just want to stop the soda and other stuff that has hardly any nutritional value, stuff that makes people fat and sick.

Agreed, but on that last part you'd have to include every single one of us. Education is the answer, but education is also hard to force on someone else.

Originally Posted by Taz22

It makes great sense to buy real food and not processed food and sugary drinks. There is nothing wrong with cooking a healthy meal for your family, whatever your income level. .

Sure - if you have a stove, if you have proper food storage especially refrigeration, and if you have the cooking equipment.

When you're living paycheck to paycheck, it's hard to justify spending money on pots and pans and utensils, even if you can pick them up for $5 at the thrift shop. It's hard to justify buying in bulk, even when the unit price is much cheaper on the bulk item than the single item (my husband used to buy one roll of toilet paper at a time for $1 instead of four rolls for $1.59 when he was young and broke, because he wanted to spend that 59 cents on something else - that's one example). It's hard to buy a bag of five oranges - that cost $1 more than a single orange - when you have no refrigeration in which to store them. I saw that countless times with people coming to the food pantry where I worked. Even when the basic ingredients for a meal were free, they didn't want them because of storage or preparation limitations.

Originally Posted by heart84

Great news! Hopefully this will cut down on long-term costs associated with Medicaid too. If you want freebies, better start eating healthier. Since these individuals will be eating better and as a result feeling better, maybe it will give them extra motivation to make something of themselves. Eh well, probably not.

What a generous attitude about your fellow man.

Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould

Years ago, I worked for a time helping those on Food Stamps manage their money. I was amazed at how many simply did not know how to make a pot of soup.

Did they have the equipment to make the pot of soup? That was an issue with a lot of folks who came to the member pantries at the food bank I worked at.

As for junk food - it was stunning to hear from children how many of them would get a bag of potato chips or a couple of cookies for dinner.

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

Maybe we should put pressure on the food industry to make all food healthier rather than sit here deciding who should and who shouldn't buy junk food.

Right on.

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

When I worked with the poor I was amazed at how many did not have kitchen facilities and had to depend on a microwave for meal prep.

Exactly.

Although diets of SNAP recipients are poorer than diets of non-SNAP recipients, differences are relatively small and may be attributable to unmeasured confounders. For example, point-of-sale data suggest that there are few major differences in expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households, with about 40 cents of every food dollar spent on basic items (meat, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread) and 20 cents spent on junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages [6]. Sugar-sweetened beverages rank first in expenditures for SNAP households but second (just after milk) for non-SNAP households. Although added-sugar acquisitions are higher among SNAP participants than similar nonparticipants (31 tsp-eq versus 23 tsp-eq daily), overall diet quality as measured by the Healthy Eating Index is similar [7]. Studies correlating SNAP enrollment to obesity have been heavily publicized, but associations between SNAP and obesity disappear when adequately adjusting for unmeasured confounders [8]. In fact, many Americans—not just SNAP recipients—do not make healthy food choices in the current food system [9].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6168179/

Thanks for posting that!

Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould

The whole idea of Food Stamps is to provide decent food for those who can't afford it. That only 40% is spent on meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, and bread is a sad commentary on the program.

How much of your grocery money is spent on meat, vegetables fruit, etc.? You might be surprised.

Originally Posted by stan4

But given that these benefits are being used for the wholesale purchase of crap or sold/traded for cigs/booze (you ever work in a grocery store, sparky? Happens all the time. Daily. Effin daily), there does not seem like one single good reason NOT to restrict what you can buy to whole foods.

There really is no call to be snotty and condescending here.

[Emeraldmaiden]

Originally Posted by Mikala43

I can do a pot of 15 bean chili, comes with seasonings add ground beef, for $5. It will make about 10 servings. I can have it ready in an InstaPot in under an hour, and most of that is cooking time, not prep.

It is also a great "garbage can" for any left over OR fresh veggies, or even canned. Expanding the nutrition and servings.

Much healthier for you than a highly processed lasagna.

Don't you consider an Instant Pot to be a luxury kitchen appliance, though? Granted, they're very useful - I have one myself - but I wouldn't have been able to afford a $60-$100+ item when I was on SNAP. Hell, I didn't even have a crock pot. My food was all cooked in regular pots & pans, stovetop or oven.


On rice - back in the 70's, we had LDS neighbors who served a lot of rice. They liked it with butter and sugar. Oh, and they also dipped their fresh tomato slices/wedges in sugar. What do you want to bet that unhealthy tradition has continued with their children & grandchildren?

[FC76-81]

Originally Posted by thriftylefty

This is what happens when rich people try to make laws for poor people. Poor people always figure out a way to get over. Like buying steaks and ribs with food stamps and trading them for $.70 to the $1.00 for cash. Forget about it, its already a thing to make cash out of food stamps. They are already using them for cigarette and beer money.

Precisely. They've been doing that old switch aroo with the funny money since I can remember.