Authored by James Bovard, op-ed via The Hill,
The Trump administration is pushing radical changes in the food stamp program as part of the farm bill. Reform efforts may be derailed by activists who vastly exaggerate hunger and portray food handouts as the epitome of social justice. But federal food handouts have already done far too much damage to Americans’ health.
Food stamps are now feeding 42 million people. Twitter activists created a #HandsOffSNAP hashtag to seek to block any efforts at reform. But, while politicians portray food stamps as a nutrition program (Congress changed the name to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, in 2008), they are actually a blank check to buy more calories.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Food stamps have long been a dietary disaster. Walter Willett, chair of Harvard University’s Department of Nutrition, observed, “We’ve analyzed what (food stamp) participants are eating and it’s horrible food. It’s a diet designed to produce obesity and diabetes.” A 2017 public health study found that food stamp recipients were twice as likely to be obese as eligible non-recipients. Similarly, a 2015 USDA report revealed that food stamp recipients are more likely to be obese than eligible non-recipients (40 percent vs. 32 percent).
Food stamps are a perpetual bailout for the junk food industry. A 2016 USDA report revealed that soft drinks are the most common commodity purchased in food stamp households. Together, “sweetened beverages, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar” account for 20 percent of food stamp expenditures. Food stamp recipients consume twice as many of their daily calories from sugar-sweetened beverages as do higher incomes groups (12 percent vs. 6 percent), according to a 2015 study in Preventive Medicine.
A federal program designed simply to boost calorie consumption makes no sense at a time when obesity is rampant. Forty-four percent of low-income women are obese; the rate is even higher for black (56 percent) and Hispanic (49 percent).
Food stamps are justified to prevent hunger but the federal government does not even attempt to collect data on how many Americans actually go hungry. The National Academy of Sciences urged USDA to create a hunger gauge in 2006 but the agency has done nothing on that score. Instead, USDA conducts annual surveys measuring a vaporous notion of “food security” — which can simply mean uncertainty about being able to afford groceries in the future or not being able to afford the organic food one prefers. Though USDA stresses that the survey is not a measure of hunger, its results (and those of similar surveys) are perennially twisted to maximize teeth-gnashing.
According to the Share Our Strength No Hungry Kids’ campaign, “1 in 6 kids in the U.S. face hunger.” According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, “one in five children go to bed and awaken hungry.” A sparsely-responded food security survey released last month by Temple University sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rah implied that 36 percent of college students were suffering from hunger (the report is titled “Still Hungry and Homeless in College”). The tactic helped spur ludicrous headlines claiming her report showed “starvation” among students.
After equating food insecurity with hunger, handout advocates acknowledge that food insecurity is connected to weight gain. Throughout most of human history, hungry people were portrayed as gaunt, if not emaciated. But nowadays, a profusion of XXL shirt sizes is apparently proof that more free food is needed more than ever before. Blaming obesity on hunger or food insecurity is a way for these advocates to absolve millions of overweight people for every Big Gulp Pepsi they ever drank.
A far more accurate gauge of Americans’ food deprivation is available from international data. The United Nations estimated last year that fewer than 2.5 percent of Americans are undernourished and that 1.4 percent suffered from severe food insecurity. This report tracks with a 2012 Journal of the American Medical Association analysis that noted that “seven times as many (low-income) children are obese as are underweight.”
The Trump administration proposes replacing much of the food stamp program with boxes of government-issued food. Though a similar program helped protect people against severe hunger prior to the creation of food stamps, switching to food distribution at this point would likely be confusing, if not counterproductive.
It would be far more effective to reform food stamps based on the Womens Infant Children program, which provides coupons only for specific relatively healthy foods. A 2014 Stanford University studyconcluded that prohibiting the use of food stamps for sugary drinks would prevent 141,000 kids from becoming fat and save a quarter million adults from Type 2 diabetes. Restricting food stamp purchases for junk food (a popular bipartisan reform with the nation’s governors and mayors) would have far greater health benefits.
The latest controversies around food stamps are a reminder that hysteria is a poor substitute for hard facts. There is no constitutional right to free junk food. America can aid the truly hungry without creating an illusory safety net that does more to spur obesity than to improve diets.
I say let nature take its course. These obese people that are buying Twinkies and crap food with the SNAP payments are literally slowly killing themselves. This is food Darwinism. Most of them are high colonels in the free shit army anyway. Yes, we have to pay for their “healthcare” but at least after this year, we – you know, the people that go to work and support the country – are no longer forced at gun point to pay Obamacare for these people. Fuck em….
You do realize that there are Medicare and disability programs that keep them alive for quite a while at YOUR expense.
The problem with your solution is that someone is indeed fucking them and they’re reproducing faster than we can pay for their food and healthcare. Welfare should be limted to orphans, widows and the truly disabled.
Make a list of basic staples people can get with their EBT card.
Way too logical and lacks the redundancy and unnecessary complexity for a government run program.
I have news – hunger is good for you. It is the natural state of mankind throughout the vast majority of history. Your body uses hunger to impel you to seek out food, keeping you active and fit, e.g. hunting and gathering. Hunger causes the body to seek out the best foods, while carb feasting causes fatness, diabetes and sloth. Fasting, as the tech nerds are now rediscovering, is beneficial to you in many ways, including life extension. Those who are underfed, say by limiting food stamps, will become more motivated productive humans via their desire to upgrade their diet. Necessity IS the mother of invention, especially when it comes to food. I know this because I spent the first two decades of my life in various states of hunger caused by poverty and neglect. Now I am a healthy 170 lb. 65 year old who can go 1-3 days without food if necessary or desired.
From the article -“There is no constitutional right to free junk food. ” Correction – There is no constitutional right for free food, junk food or otherwise.
Also from the article – “switching to food distribution at this point would likely be confusing, if not counterproductive.” No proof is offered for this statement, which is only a guess. And who cares if there is confusion? Perhaps the author thinks there is a constitutional right to not be confused!
Far to many people have become addicted to welfare compensation and handing out non perishable food is probably a better way than an EBT card that supplies Wal Mart with 40% of their corporate income . Let’s not stop there , section 8 rent vouchers , no more welfare for landlords . Subsidies and tax incentives to businesses bye bye Tesla bye bye Wall Street retention bonuses for screwing up the nations economy . How about government employees paid by real world performance . I bet teachers would find a way to rid themselves of students screwing up their evaluation and the teachers union backing it up ! Where does it end ? Don’t know but obviously the last 40 plus years of this nonsense is not working .
Maybe it’s time to starve them all out including the Washington DC real “FREE SHIT ARMY”!
“handing out non perishable food is probably a better way than an EBT card”,. a government run distribution network would be expensive and complex. How about an approved list of healthier EBT eligible food products for retailers like Walmart, etc? They already have established distribution networks and retail shelving to create an EBT section.
An ebt section containing milk, beans, rice, govt cheese, flour, salt, yeast, red pepper, and coffee to get em up and moving.
Government gets involved in nutrition.
Results? People getting fatter and sicker.
#fukmedead, I never saw that coming.
How many hundred years did we happily exist with zero inflation?
Then in 1913 the biggist scam in world history was pulled off.
All the horrific problem’s in the world I think, can be traced back to that event. Had that never occured we would not have a bloated sick gov.,and all problems associated with that. Debt,homeless,hunger,etc. Lets hope the cryptos will diminish the roll that gov has in the future. However I fear that that same enemy has there own plan in place to pervert that. “fed coin” sort of shit?
How many of the Americans living in “Food Deserts” on the SNAP Program bother to grow a garden like folks did 50 years ago before the Great Society Welfare FSA was created that now sucks the life out of Working Folks? It’s more likely the Middle Class White Folks who don’t qualify who have the gardens, are canning food, and have livestock to survive. Screw the FSA! When TSHTF, don’t ya’ll Democrat POSs ask me for a darn thing. Gonna take it? We’re ready-4-ya.
how many of you guys remember when retailers who accepted food stamps(and they really were “stamps” instead of an atm card like today) had to have a sign posted that listed the allowable purchases?
i’ve challenged both customers & clerks when i saw a purchase being made that wasn’t allowed-
i’ve only been on this site for about 2 years so it is sometime in that period but there was an article posted here about a study done by one of the n eastern states auditing what/where purchases were made on welfare cards–atm machines in casinos,other states,puerto rico,etc-
it seems the poor like to travel–