Nutrition-Free Food And SNAP
Let’s check in on the left - and paid social media influencers - to see what they’re screaming about today, shall we?
Oh boy, this is a good one: They’re livid that food stamp recipients in the SNAP program may be prevented from using their government assistance to buy junk food.
You know, sodas, cookies, sugary cereals, chips, etc.
Autonomy? Consumers?
Look, Americans can eat what they like as long as they’re buying it with THEIR money.
When people accept tax dollars, however, they cease to be consumers. They’re dependents. We have a right to control where dependents spend OUR money.
And that loot shouldn’t be spent on foods that lack any nutritional value.
Many American budget-conscious families cut back on junk food in the past few years as a way to deal with Biden’s runaway inflation. Meanwhile, the federal government took their hard-earned tax dollars and handed them over to poor families who continued to slurp up the nutrition-free food.
SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, administered by the USDA, to provide “food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.”
NUTRITIOUS foods. Doritos, Coke and Oreos, for instance?
Any wonder Big Food is howling about restrictions and paying influencers to argue against it on social media?
Here’s a deceptive message courtesy of the American Beverage Association at AmericanBeverage.org
PROTECTING SNAP BEVERAGE CHOICE
Millions of Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help feed their families. They deserve the same freedom to choose the foods and beverages that best fit their needs.
Restricting products – like soda – from SNAP won’t make anyone healthier or save a $1 in taxpayer spending, whether SNAP costs today or healthcare costs tomorrow. Instead, restrictions will only grow government bureaucracy and costs while creating a slippery slope to government deciding “good” and bad” foods.
Seriously?
The Make America Healthy Again initiative, pushed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and supported by the White House is causing the administration to take a serious look at how food assistance is being handled and how tax dollars may be helping to fuel the obesity and chronic disease epidemic in America
Kennedy has called for the government to stop allowing the nearly $113 billion program that serves about 42 million Americans to use benefits to pay for “soda or processed foods,” which has been echoed by his MAHA political action committee.
Taxpayers not only underwrite the bad eating habits of the poor, but they pay again when these obese diabetics require expensive healthcare for heart and other chronic diseases brought on buy a lousy diet.
Kansas, along with 15 states including Idaho, Tennessee, Arizona, and Utah are considering bills that ask the federal government to allow SNAP restrictions on candy and sugary drinks.
This change would not require enlarging the bureaucracy. It would simply require grocery stores to decline EBT payments for junk foods, they same way they decline payment for tobacco and beer.
By limiting the types of food eligible for food stamps, recipients might even be incentivized to go to work. Or stop eating garbage.
Then again, maybe not. At least the public won’t be paying for the bad eating habits of the poor.
Exactly.
