Well, you can’t but champagne with food stamps. You can’t buy any alcoholic drinks with food stamps, not the cheapest beer nor the priciest scotch.
$20/lb steak is pretty expensive, all right. But you realize that if a recipient spends her food stamps for that, she doesn’t get more in her account, right? She gets a set amount per month. So spending that $20 on a pound of steak may be a waste of her benefits for the month, but the cost to the tax payer is exactly the same as if she had spent that money on sacks of rice and beans.
To a very small extent they are told what to buy - or rather not buy. The current limits are:
no alcohol
no tobacco
no hot take-out meals and certain take-out/prepared foods
Even with that, I’ve heard people argue that wine and beer are used in many recipes. Well, that’s true, but they’re very much optional ingredients and certainly MOST people have zero problem with that restriction. If a poor person wants to buy a six pack they’ll have to scrounge the money somehow (I find that turning in 10 lbs of aluminum cans for recycling can generate sufficient funds for something of that sort, so it’s not unreachable)
Tobacco - not even a food product, never heard anyone argue against that restriction.
No hot take-out, etc. - well, you know, that does kill someone getting a healthy salad at a salad bar, as well as a hot take-out pizza. I do sorta understand that restriction, as the intent is to buy groceries and not subsidize restaurants. But it is weird that you can buy a bag of salad mix and a bottle of dressing on food stamps, but not put the exact same ingredients in a plastic take out bowl from a salad bar and use foodstamps to buy that. That’s a case were a healthy food may be barred from the program. Which just illustrates that no matter how you write the rules something will be left out, or the result will be less than perfect.
So the question is more “should we have more restrictions, or just live with what we’ve got now?”
Let’s go back to the OP question: Should people only be allowed to purchase ingredients with food stamps? WHAT ingredients? Some of the complaint foods - lobster, high-end steak, etc. - are ingredients in the sense I think the OP framed the question. People will still bitch about that. Do you have a cut-off on ingredients? You can buy the white rice but not the more expensive brown or wild rice? You can buy wheat/corn/rice but not the more expensive exotic grains like quinoa or teff? You can buy ground beef but not steak? Doesn’t this get complicated? You start to see why the agency just said “food groceries”, and even then, they got some odd things allowed on the list - for example, you can buy seeds but I don’t think you can by already started plants. In rural Alaska you can buy certain types of hunting equipment with food stamps.
Every time this comes up we wind up with these long threads where everyone has different ideas of what should be allowed and what is and isn’t healthy or necessary. If people weren’t so apt to get their panties in a bunch over the topic it would make for an enjoyable debate.
Well you can buy cooking wine with EBT. The salad bar thing is odd. :dubious: When I worked in a supermarket people could buy salad bar items with EBT (or at least our POS system thought they could), but they couldn’t get anything from the soup bar.
So basically, it’s the bacon flavor, without the fat and grease of bacon? (Could you get bacon spices then, without the salt? That might be even better for you)
Sounds like a good idea.
One reason why certain items might be more expensive for some and not for others might be time of the year, or the area you live in. Depending on what’s in season, or where certain items have to be shipped in, etc.
Most of my comments were aimed towards the concerns of single parents, who are more likely to be poor than rich. Obviously it’s hard to raise a kid on your own no matter who you are.
That said, rich single parents do have advantages over poor single parents.
They have things like dishwashers, food processors, crockpots, double-basin sinks, good knives, decent nonstick pans, etc. that make cooking and cleaning up after a faster and less tiring process. Ever tried to cook with a crappy kitchen knife? It takes twice as long and ends up hurting your hands. They have kitchens that are pleasant and relaxing to spend time in, and often have open floor plans that keep them a part of family life as they cook. There is a big difference between cooking while you watch TV and the kids do homework at the breakfast bar and cooking alone in your tiny cramped kitchen while the kids do god-knows-what in the living room.
They have well-stocked clean grocery stores in their neighborhoods, cars that get them there and transport all those bulky fruits and veggies, and detached houses so they aren’t hauling bags of groceries up a few flights of stairs. They have storage for a well-stocked pantry and the money to keep it loaded with staples and extras like spices and sauces. They have large freezers that they can keep full of yummy stuff and do the “cook in bulk” thing, and they end up buying more fruits and veggies because they aren’t tracking every penny and worrying about how much money they will lose if something spoils.
They have the chance to expand their food knowledge by visiting restaurants, libraries of cookbooks and the money to buy the exotic ingredients needed to make the exciting new recipes in them and keep cooking interesting and rewarding. For shortcuts they can afford pre-chopped veggies, good frozen veggie mixes, pre-roasted chicken, spice packets, pre-made sauces, etc.
Finally, they usually have regular schedules, so they are not working all kinds of strange shifts that change week-to-week, meaning they can plan ahead and have less waste of fresh food. Furthermore they can afford stuff like housekeepers, daycare, good cleaning products, etc. that make the rest of their household tasks less time-consuming and difficult.
Of course it is just poor who eat badly. You can be sure the sanctimonious snobs on this board who are criticizing the little people ,eat properly and are not overweight. That is why they can take the poor by their chubby little hands and impart their great wisdom.
The rich are never obese. they have learned how to shop. They have mastered the crock pot. They get the risk of eating badly. No poor person understands what foods are fattening. it is just above their level of comprehension. perhaps the smart , thin and wise people on this board can create operational lists for the poor to follow by rote.
Yes, it is. But…you didn’t mention anything about single parents, you were talking about POOR parents. And even non-poor, non-single parents don’t have the luxury of having the other parent around all the time. Sometimes the other parents work an opposite shift. Sometimes they are deployed. Sometimes they just work long hours. In my case, my husband travels 5 days a week for work. So, yes, I’m tired at the end of the day, I only have 2 hours to spend with my kids, and I still have to make sure they eat relatively healthfully. It’s part of the deal when you’re a parent.
Some of them have those things. Some of them have some of those things. Most aren’t lucky enough to have all of those things. Not every non-poor person is rich. Not everyone has a fancy new house with a huge kitchen. I’ve got an old house with a kitchen that’s stuck in the back and is barely big enough for two people to turn around in. I do have a dishwasher and a few decent knives, and I’m not gonna lie about it…that does help. But some of the things you mention are the least of it.
All of that (except for the housekeeper…you’re living in a dream world if you think that all non-poor people can afford housekeepers) is completely true. But you didn’t cite any of that. You were talking JUST about the fact that the mom works until 5, and has 2 hours a day with their kid, and taking the time to cook means you have to sacrifice something else. And none of the above changes the fact that this is true for all working parents. If I am cooking, I am not doing homework. If I am cooking, I am not cuddling. If I am cooking, I am not reading to them. None of the above resources you mention makes any of that less true. Even if I make extra dinners on the weekends and freeze them…it still takes time.
Finally, not sure what you’re getting at with the “good” frozen veggie mixes and spice packets, but that kind of stuff is affordable on food stamps. And not too many of us have the time to peruse exotic cookbooks for new recipes. I’m making roasted chicken with rosemary tonight. A basic recipe that won’t take too much time, cause I’m trying to spend some time with the kids today. It seems like you don’t really have a clue how normal, everyday, working families operate. I’m sorry, but you really don’t.
I’d expect that the typical “rich single parent” has a cook, and doesn’t need to spend any time cooking at all if they don’t feel like it. Their situation isn’t remotely anything like that of a poor parent.
I understand deficit spending just fine, thanks. However, I’m pretty sure that’s not what we’re talking about - we’re talking about food stamps.
If you would like to make an argument that the food stamp program and other government assistance programs should be discontinued altogether because your economy is such a disaster, well fair enough, but that isn’t what this thread is about (as far as I’m aware).
This thread is about if, assuming that these programs DO exist, and continue to exist, how much control should you, or me or Bobo the clown have over what a recipient spends the money they receive on. I believe the answer is not much control at all and my reasoning is simple - in almost all cases these people have contributed $$ to the system which they are now utilizing. They have earned the right to choose to purchase a box of HoHos and some Fanta if they choose. I don’t think it’s the healthiest choice, but it’s none of my business.
Now, if you want to discuss if the whole program should be scrapped, or reformed, or changed or whatever, that’s a different story on which I have no opinion. I absolutely agree that the US economy is a disaster and I hope that steps are taken to improve it if only because it tends to drag the Canadian economy down when it falters; however, to me that doesn’t have much to do with how a user of a current program should be treated.
The funny thing about your chip-on-the-shoulder rants in this thread is that the comment you’re bitching about now is from Rushgeekgirl who has explained in detail that she is currently receiving food stamps so she’s far from rich. Please don’t let things like facts get in the way of your broad brush painting and righteous indignation. We wouldn’t want that to happen.
I think the point of even’s post, though poorly framed, was that the working poor generally have it harder. And they do.
Imagine a single mother of two who works at McDonald’s, making minimum wage. She stands on her feet all day and is physically exhausted by the end of the day. She gets off of work at 4:30, but must take two buses to get home. There’s a 30 minute lay-over between each one. So let’s say she gets home at 6:15.
She lives in a low-income highrise building, on the tenth floor. The elevators are some-timey, and today they aren’t working. She has to walk up ten flights of stairs–passing by suspicious characters all the way. When she gets to her floor, she can already hear her six and seven year olds fighting. She opens the door and sees, to not much surprise, that they’ve made a huge mess of the place. TV’s way too loud and it’s obvious no one has started on homework–even though the “rule” is no TV-watching while doing homework. But being unable to afford a babysitter to supervise them, she can only get so angry.
It’s just past 6:30. The kids go to bed in two hours. She makes them sit down with their schoolwork while she tries to scratch together something for dinner. There’s the Amy Tan stirfry which she likes, even though she has to stand on those sore feet of hers to make it. But the kids hate the stirfry and won’t eat it, and she’s way too tired to hear the whining. Or she could pop in the microwavable Stouffer’s lasagna, which everyone likes, and not even have to worry about standing on her feet. But…except that’s not true, because she realizes that she’s got to get the laundry together if the kids will have something to wear tomorrow. She should make the kids help her, but they’re too busy doing their homework (or at least she hopes they are).
Dinner’s ready at 7:15. Schoolwork is still unfinished, and she knows she can’t let that slip by because the teachers keep calling as it is. So instead of making the kids do the dishes, she does them. Because if she doesn’t do them right away, the roaches will carry them away.
Dammit, the laundry! The laundry room closes at 9:00, so she’s got to get down to the basement and fast. But…that damn elevator is still not working! Why didn’t she do the laundry on her day off? Because she was taking her GRE classes, helping her mother move into her new apartment, and then going to the social services place to show them proof that she’s been working and taking classes so she can still keep receiving benefits. All that ripping and running without a car…the laundry had been the last thing on her mind.
She gets the laundry in, and meanwhile she’s got to get the kids ready to go to bed. Butts need to be washed, the boy’s got to take his asthma medication, and the girl needs a bandaide and consoling becaue her brother put a gash in her head with a shoe while the mother was downstairs, putting in the laundry. They’re in bed just past 8:30. Good. Maybe this time the teachers won’t complain about them falling asleep in class.
Speaking of which, it’s about time she start getting ready to go to bed if she wants to be rested tomorrow. Because she must rise at 5:00 so she can make the 6:00 bus in time. 'Cuz if she misses it, she’ll be a real late for work (remember she has to catch that other bus). But there’s the laundry to fold, to iron, to lay out for the next day. And there’s her own homework she has to do, because her GRE teacher doesn’t play. The apartment is still a mess, she hasn’t checked to see if her kids actually did their homework, and that damn bathtub faucet is still leaking because she hasn’t had time to bug the building super about it. But she’s exhausted. Out of all the things she has on her task list, she manages to do the folding and ironing and only one worksheet of her GRE stuff before she retires to bed. By then it’s ten-thirty. She looks at herself in the mirror and thinks to herself, “I’m just 27 and I look like I’m 50.”
At least the kids are old enough to fend for themselves in the morning.
Every minute in this woman’s life is precious. I think that was what even sven was getting at. If she had a SO with a job to share some of the housework and kiddie duties with, things would be a lot different. If she didn’t have a physically exhaustive job, things would be a lot different. If she could get a job closer to where she worked, things would be a lot different. If her housing situation was better, things would be a lot different. If she wasn’t so stressed out about the requirements needed for keeping her benefits, things would be a lot different. These differences separate the working poor from middle-class people. Yes, she shouldn’t have dropped out of school in the first place. That was dumb, but her mother said she had to because they were going to get evicted if someone else in the household didn’t get a full-time job. Being the oldest, it had to be her. And yeah she shouldn’t have had sex with that guy from 'round the way, but she really thought they were going to get married. However, reliving past mistakes doesn’t put healthy food on the table.
She’ll have to save that Amy Tan cuisine for her next day off, when the kids aren’t around.
I’ve been blessed in my life and have never been poor (close to it, yes, but never without parental fall back). But for some reason, it is very easy for me to see how hard life is when you don’t make but $12,000 or less a year and you have kids to boot. Not only is it a hard life, but it’s a different life as well. Priorities change. Expectations change. Everything changes.
Convenience foods (like frozen entrees) should not be lumped in with “junk food”. They make handling living through poverty easier, and that’s what the whole footstamp program should be about.
When I was in graduate school, I was poor. Poor in the sense that if I had 2 glasses of orange juice one day, that meant none some other day. If my (8 yr old) car had problems, I had to fix it myself. I ate lots of rice and chile and was lucky that school had plenty of free (or real cheap) entertainment.
But the thing is… you kind of expect to be poor in grad school, and I was a single guy in good health. And, being in school provides a lot of intellectual stimulation and a pretty big support network, too. I was invited to parties at professors homes, and lived on campus most of the time so I didn’t really need a car. I had a lot of flexibility in my schedule and knew the whole thing was temporary-- I was sacrificing so that things would be better (much better) in the future.
As a working poor person with kids, your situation is altogether different. You’re probably trying to get ahead, but you don’t really know if you actually will. You probably have a tight schedule to adhere to, as well. You’re not slumming it for a few years-- it may be for a decade or more, or even the rest of your life. I think we should err on the side of thinking that parents really do want what is best for their kids, and unless they are physically abusive to them, we should let the poor feed their kids in the same way any non-poor person can. If that includes a certain amount of potato chips and mac&cheese, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
lol, monstro, I was wondering the same thing…do her books have recipes?
I get what you are saying, I really do. It was just weird that even sven exactly described my life, and basically said it was unworkable. And she does seem sometimes to live in a world where some people are incredibly poor, and everyone else has housekeepers, which we all know is far from true.
One of the things that always bothers me about these threads is that there seems to be the idea that people who are on food stamps are economizing, and everyone else can buy anything and everything they want to. Most people have budgets and have to watch what they spend. I think people have a kneejerk reaction to seeing people on food stamps buying certain things…because they know that when money is tight for them they can’t always buy those things. They expect people on food stamps to economize the same way anyone would if it was their own money, which really is not completely unreasonable.
As I said, I don’t think it’s any kind of a fair or workable solution, but I get where it comes from.
eta: I just realized that even sven probably DOES live in a world where some people are desperately poor, and everyone else has housekeepers, but she should know that it’s not true of the culture that most of this board is from, including her.
I don’t know if this is true of anyone else on food stamps, but when I went on the program I actually had MORE money to spend on food than before. That’s right - I’d been living on less than the program granted us. Well, that’s where having a big garden and knowing how to cook from scratch paid off. So… I didn’t go out and buy steak and lobster, I went out and bought canned goods and dry goods and really stocked up the pantry. After that, I’d always buy and extra can or two of stuff for my “emergency food reserve”.
Well, we went off the program, and at the time I was making sufficient funds for us to not worry about things so much. But we’re having a lean month now and I found myself digging into the hoard I’d built up those six months on the program… which has actually kept me from re-applying because, you know, I do have food in the house and the documentation crap is such a pain in the ass at times.
I’m curious if anyone else who’s been on the program did any stocking up?
No broad brush needed. Lets be specific, Anybody who bitches about how other people eat , is a jerk who should mind his own business. You assume from what a person puts in a basket one time, that you can interpolate to make judgments about their life style and intellect. It is presumptuous, it is rude, and way overstepping your bounds. Mind your own damn business and quit making judgments about absolute strangers.
Wow, monstro, you really do have a good picture of what it’s like to be poor, for never having been there.
I’m definitely poor, but even I feel like I haven’t QUITE been there, because I have some advantages that many poor people don’t. Most importantly, I was raised middle class and my family is still middle class. I never have to worry about being homeless or going hungry, because they would never allow that to happen. As much as I love love love my mom, living with her is absolute hell…but it would sure beat living on the streets, and if I had to, I could.
Also, I graduated high school, on time, with honors, and with a 3-month-old baby. I received my bachelors degree last year at age 27. I’m smart and resourceful. I receive child support regularly (though it’s not a lot, it’s better than the nothing that many single mothers get). I only have one child. I was lucky enough to receive Section 8 right before that all went to hell, and it was all but impossible to get here and almost everywhere else (before that, 90% of my income was going to rent for my 1-bedroom apartment–and I was working). I have a car that works pretty well (but it’s 14 years old and I’m always worried that will soon come to an end).
But even with all those advantages, being poor sucks! It makes so many things so much more difficult. The last hellhole I lived in, everything was always broken, and my car was broken into/attempted stolen 3 times in a year. Each time, I had to pay hundreds of dollars to have it fixed, and that was certainly money I did not have. But I had to have a car, since my commute was like 3 hours a day DRIVING. So on our ridiculous public transportation system, well…there literally aren’t enough hours in the day.
I had to pick my 3rd grader up from my mom’s house at about 10:30pm because that’s the only time the class I needed was offered, and then get her to bed hopefully by 11pm, and then try to get her up in the morning in time for school, which was very difficult, and made me feel so guilty for putting her in that position. But I figured that the advantages of me getting my bachelors degree would outweigh that temporary difficulty.
Well, unfortunately things did not work out quite so well. I had REALLY given the whole situation a lot of thought, and done tons of research, and thought that getting my BA in Law and Justice would be good for both of us, because one could get a decent job with the state right out of college, and they were always hiring for that position. I even interned for the state to improve my chances of landing a job, and to increase my knowledge.
How was I to know that, for the first time ever, RIGHT before I graduated, the state would take the extreme step of dropping every single low- and medium-risk offender from supervision? The state was (and is) in the midst of a budget crisis, and that was one of their “solutions”. All of a sudden, they went from always hiring, to laying off people.
I applied for jobs at many other places, but no takers. Obviously, this is not the best time to be looking for a job. Even if I did manage to find one, for medical reasons I don’t think I could work most jobs anyway right now.
I sure don’t mean to make it sound like, boo hoo hoo, my life is sooo hard. Like I said, it’s easier than the lives of many of others. But I HAVE tried. I’ve really, really tried. I have fairly severe depression and anxiety issues, and anything I do takes a lot of effort. And so far, the effort has seemed mostly futile. And now someone wants to come along and say I should have no right to buy my daughter a Lunchable on sale at Target for her school field trip? Really?! Don’t you have some puppies to kick or something? <rhetorical; not aimed at anyone here>
We needn’t worry much about the food stamp program, it has powerful friends wth voices that our politicians bend an ear to. What, ACORN, MoveOn, The People’s Progressive Party for the Liberation of Stuff? Nope.
Con Agra. Archer Daniels Midland. Nabisco. A segment of corporate America is deeply imbued with compassionate concern for their American brethren. Rest assured, they will carry the fight for us. This includes oodles of Republicans, though they have the good grace not to flaunt it before their Red State constituencies.
Let us take a moment to be appropriately grateful. OK, that’s enough.
