So… Trump (or his administration or RFK, Jr) want to replace current food aid to seniors with boxes of food. Most prior proposals have suggested shelf-stable food but this one wants to ship perishable food in boxes to seniors.
I don’t see how this reduces cost, and if the food arrives spoiled and/or is looted by porch pirates I don’t see how it improves nutrition. That’s aside from the problem of seniors who are disabled and either can not or should not be cooking (such as my former downstairs neighbor who set her apartment on fire twice while cooking).
This seems to come up whenever Trump is the President so I guess we’ll be hearing about it for at least the next three years. I think it’s a terrible idea and inefficient. Unless, of course, the goal is to starve homeless people to death because, without a fixed address, they won’t be able to receive these packages.
Prior threads on this or related subjects include:
So instead of letting people choose the food they want to buy and want to eat, they’re going to send boxes of food that may not be to their taste, or compatible with their diet or religion? This administration is far more intrusive than any fantasies Republicans have about Democrats.
Well yeah - it’s always a matter of the Republicans screaming “government interference!” when Democrats make suggestions like serving healthier food for school lunches but when they’re in power want to micromanage what entire families eat daily.
There was a time when the US government handed out commodities instead of money to buy food. We stopped doing that because loading a debit card/EBT was more efficient in so many ways. But this isn’t about efficiency, helping the poor, or even saving money. It’s about pushing an ideology.
Not just what people eat; this administration is interfering in what universities teach, hiring practices of law firms, what business private companies pursue or don’t pursue and so forth.
Right. We’re moving to an economy that’s controlled and directed by the Federal government. Remind me again - what’s the name for that sort of economy?
There’s also the huge problem that not everyone can eat the same foods, for varying reasons medical, religious, textural, dental, or of different tastebuds.
And it would be a total waste to send me produce that I’m growing.
— The food bank here already provides almost entirely healthy stuff. But the choices include a good bit of variety; and they let you take just what you’ll use — x number of items from this table, y number from that, and so on. Numbers are adjusted per number of people in the household. And they know what people in this area will take more or less of. Just give them more funding!
I have to wonder whether this isn’t – at least in part – just some deal being made by this administration to try to placate the farmers for what they lo$t with the reduction in SNAP benefits (6pp PDF).
And, yeah: as somebody who was most recently in charge of the global supply chain for a very perishable product (flowers), it’s a nightmare to manage.
Plus, we already have an infrastructure network for distributing food. They’d have to duplicate that for the government boxes, which would be hugely inefficient.
The ideology that government funds should only be directed to large contractors (like AmeriQual, Sopakco, or Wornick) that can reciprocate with political donations and not directly to poor people who can only reciprocate with their unreliable votes.
SNAP is the program that gives Walmart 25 BILLION dollars with the unfortunate side effect of keeping the poor from starving.
“They only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog. Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work, then we’re providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home.” ~ Bar Rescue host Jon Taffer
This makes me think of certain products that just don’t sell, usually for some very good reasons, and are marked down shortly before their sell-by dates, or they simply get sent to salvage stores or the landfill.
Hey! Let’s send them to the needy! They’ll love it!