An alarming study has spotlighted how 42 million food stamp recipients spend their welfare handouts on ultra-processed junk food.
Coca-Cola, Sprite and other soft drinks are the most commonly-bought items via the $135 billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a new study says.
Candy, potato chips, frozen pizza, ice cream, cookies, and other ultra-processed food dominates the top 20 items, says a report from the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC).
Report author Matthew Dickerson says recipients spend ‘spend significant portions of their allotments on junk food.’
Even such seemingly healthy items as baked breads and lunch meat often contain dangerous dyes and preservatives
I can tell you what they buy. I was in the grocery business for 38 years. Let me set the stage. Here comes gran mamma in a handicap cart 300lbs followed by a baby mamma pushing 250, followed by the the fat little kids. They start in the bakery at least half a dozen items, all cake stuff, then to the meat dept, for alot of pork, and beef, and lunch meat. Cases of Oodles of noodles. Potato chip, and soda isle. Hit that dairy isle for milk, butter, cheese, and eggs. I was in Produce. Would never see them. First of the month is hell in these stores. Then when the snap benefits run out end if the month they start feeding the kids oodles of noodles, and snacks to fill them up.
If the government truly believes in its FDA food pyramid and dietary recommendations, then structure the purchase power of SNAP to follow them, i.e., providing well-rounded nutrition and not supporting the purchase with public funds the “foods” that are directly detrimental to health , promoting obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and a long list of debilitating diseases.
Carb addiction is a disease in itself, yet sugar-heavy drinks, chips, pastries and cookies are high on the list of bad SNAP purchases.
It’s so sad. But it’s not even just the SNAP beneficiaries who buy such junk. As a person who tries to be careful about eating “real” food and minimizing if not eliminating undesirable preservatives and chemicals and processing, I have to say that it’s incredibly hard to find foods that aren’t so toxic. Even things that are marketed as healthy are not really. Just because a front label says nice things doesn’t mean it’s true. I advise people to read the actual ingredients lists, but it’s surprising how difficult that seems to be for most people. The stores are mostly full of the junk, so that must be due to the fact that it sells. It’s terrible how the giant food companies have created helpless processed food junkies who wouldn’t know how to cook a simple vegetable or bean or whole grain or simple animal protein if it was given to them. And soda is possibly the dumbest and most evil thing of all. Well, now they can inject Ozempic to try to reverse the obesity that this causes, which is just another shortcut. Gee, I wonder if that’s going to lead to any problems.
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You forgot to add….That latest generation I-Phone they all carry is only for the purpose of checking the balance on their SNAP card so they can keep feeding the kiddies!
They bug almost all junk foods. It shouldn’t be allowed.
BUY, not bug.
I remember going to the store with my hubby and son and scraping enough together to get some hotdogs, meanwhile the guy in line in front of us pays for 3 lbs of shrimp with his EBT card. When we left we saw him driving away in his new Escalade.