Should people only be allowed to purchase ingredients with food stamps?

Great Debates
381

WIC is an entirely different program strictly for Women, Infants, and Children (hence the name) and is run entirely separately. The list is very limited, and we’ve had cashiers here on the Dope complaining of the hassle of matching selections to list and how insane THAT list is. For example, if I recall correctly, you can buy whole wheat bread but not any other whole grain bread or a multi-grain bread. You can buy fish but not beef, poultry, pork, lamb, or any other meat. You have to buy in specific quantities - milk only in gallon jugs, not any other size, for example. For anyone with food allergies - of which there are more and more in this country - the program’s utility drops off quickly as the prominent features are dairy, eggs, wheat, fish, and peanut butter which are all common allergy culprits. Also, note that you can’t buy flour with WIC and make your own bread - you have to buy it already made.

WIC actually acts a supplement to EBT for pregnant and breast-feeding women and very young children in recognition that they have additional need for calcium and protein beyond the average person not in that group. And yes, it also supports big agriculture which of course have a hand in making up the list. It is not a replacement for EBT,

382

Ha ha ha. AH… ha ha ha! HA HA HA!

If you picked up the phone and did that Children’s Services would immediately have the place declared unfit for life and the authorities would summarily round everyone up and dump them into homeless shelters. The children would either be immediately removed from their parents or procedures would start to do so based on child endangerment and neglect. After the children are removed from their parents’ custody they will be dumped into the foster system which is rife with abuse and neglect, as well as shuffled from foster home to foster home while only intermittently seeing their parents, if at all. Meanwhile, the parents are homeless and dealing with the family courts to try and get their children back, or at least see them on a regular basis, and they still have no access to a working kitchen (because they’re homeless) where they can cook their beans, eggs and peas.

Congratulations - no only have you failed to solve the problem, you’ve now shattered every family that used to live in the buildings. Way to go.

If you ask me, organizing a bake sale to raise the money to get the electricity turned back on in that building makes more sense, and actually has some hope of working.

383

Quoted for truth.

The pettiness in this thread shocks me. No one tells a bailed out banker what they can and cannot purchase with public funds. Why are we moaning over what food stamps recipients do with some of the meagre funds we give them?

Encouraging healthy habits is a worthy goal. But a bag of potato chips or a candy bar once or a twice a week is not going to hurt anyone.

Taking kids away from parents just because they’re poor is both horribly cruel and extemely expensive.

384

That’s too commie-pinko. Plus, cookies? You think poor people should be able to eat cookies? Maybe if you put some lentils and beans in them, but not chocolate-chips!

It was my understanding that the food WIC restricts varies by state to state. Am I mistaken?

I still don’t see why, if we felt like we had to do it, SNAP couldn’t be treated like WIC except with way more allowances. Like everything in the store is allowed except candy or sodas. Or whatever else deemed too unhealthy. Which isn’t too hard to figure out. I don’t know why people are acting like the FDA wouldn’t be a good judge of separating out good foods from bad foods. Preztels, baked potato chips (yes, they are good), crackers, popcorn tend to be low fat, filling, and portable; we could put them on the “good” list. Pork rinds, cheese puffs or anything else that turns your fingers orange and greasy could, with some exceptions perhaps, would be put in the “bad” list. Also, who needs chitterlings and hogmaws for survival? They are neither easy to prepare or provide much nutrition. I don’t see anything “Big Brotherish” or patronizing about sending the message, “We want you to make it through your bad economic patch with as much dignity and freedom as possible, but we also want to promote healthy eating habits.” Because poor eating healthy habits DO affect the wider society. Call me selfish, but if someone is using public money to support a diet of hot dogs, Ding-Dongs, and orange soda for years and years, and then they use public money to get subsequent insulin shots, limp amputations, and Jazzy Scooter chairs, and THEN use public money for disability because they cannot work due to obesity and diabetic complications, and THEN (pant, pant) they use public money for housing and long-term health care…the well of sympathy is not infinite and will eventually be sucked dry, even from a bleeding-heart like me. I know this is an extreme example and probably only happens 0.01% of the time, if that. But I don’t understand why it would be so unfair to limit some things, when we’re talking about social welfare spending. “Promote the general welfare” does not mean “Promote people doing whatever they want with tax money”.

I can’t take my Section 8 voucher and live at any ole place I want to. Is that fair? Why or why not? Jeez, I hope I don’t sound like a heartless person here. But I’m starting to see some holes in the logic being used on “my” side of the discussion. It’s only fair to point them out.

WIC does serve as a model of the government steering people to certain foods. Perhaps it needs to be reformed as well, to make it less restrictive. But I, for one, am grateful for it, as it served me and my family well when I was a little one. We neither starved or suffered while we used it, even if my mother could only get certain things.

385

My post was not meant to literally suggest that you can live on a few dollars a month; rather, that a diet with a foundation of brown rice and black beans is a healthy and super cheap way to eat. Spending no more than a few dollars on rice and dried beans will last you an awful long time and enable you to build a healthy and cheap diet around it.

I don’t think calories per dollar is a good way to analyze things. Actual starvation is not really the issue. If you want to go calories per dollar, a twinkie would probably be an excellent investment, but I wouldn’t suggest a diet of twinkies to somebody who has little money.

I’ll have to take a closer look at your caloric analysis of the black beans, because I know that a pot of black beans lasts me a long time when I eat them with tortillas, etc.

I have one thing going for me now that many poverty stricken individuals do not (access to a garden), but I typically only spend 50-60$/month on groceries. Replacing my free vegetables with bulk frozen vegetables wouldn’t raise that a huge amount. It took some trial and error to figure out how to best go about this, but this is not rocket science either. I don’t see that a diet of junk food and ramen is the necessary result of a low income.

386

Heeee!

387

I never said you were an idiot; sorry if it was taken that way. I said that trying to save money by ingredient shopping and then buying expensive bags of mixed fruit would be idiotic.

I also clarified in another post that I wasn’t saying that you can eat for a few dollars a month. Rather, a few dollars of rice and beans provides a foundation for living very cheaply and nutritiously for a month.

Also, I never suggested that food stamps should only allow you to purchase certain items. Obviously, one can think of cases where that doesn’t work – ie no electricity, no appliances, etc.

My post was just in response to those (I think it was you) who suggested that one could only eat cheaply by purchasing ramen, frozen pizzas, etc. and that purchasing ingredients would invariably become expensive very quickly.

Also, if you’re going to be ingredient shopping to lower costs and live cheaply, it helps to have some kind of cooking ability…or at least common sense. If you just throw all your ingredients in a bowl, yeah, it probably will be “nasty.” Cook up some beans and rice with seasoning. Have some refried beans with fried eggs. Have beans with cheese and tortillas. Buy meat on occasion. Have peas on the side (not in a bowl with everything else) and buy other frozen vegetables so that you don’t get sick of peas. Call me crazy, but this doesn’t sound like such an outrageous diet. And keep in mind the items I listed are not the only things you can eat, obviously; I’m just using examples.

388

I have no idea - I’ve never been on WIC myself and do not fully understand or know the rules of the program.

Well, keep in mind that when the current set of rules was put in place alcohol and tobacco were already being singled out for special treatment not just by SNAP but for other reasons, like needing to be of a certain age to purchase them. So that made it relatively easy.

The Official Government Reason is the cost of logistics. I don’t know about how bar code pricing actually works, or if this is a valid excuse, but the reasoning is (apparently) that basic groceries aren’t already easily divided up into categories that would fit such a scheme. Then you get into questions of whether you should be able to buy sugar in bulk at all, or just sugar baked into cookies should be off limits, or banning anything with sugar, and does that mean sugar sugar or all sweeteners including HFCS and do we make an exception for artificial sweeteners or not? And if we do allow artificial sweeteners, does that mean diet pop is OK whereas regular isn’t?

So the rationale - whether it’s factually true or not I can’t determine - is that is would cost more in administrative and such to change the system than to simply tolerate the current flaws. That would be an interesting topic for debate.

389

It comes from your federal income tax as well as other sources of federal income.

Last year, SNAP cost 56 billion. Unemployment compensation cost 133 billion, War related expenses were 146 billion, and non-war related defense spending was an additional 548 billion. It that was cut just 10 percent it would save the entire cost of SNAP.

Like I said, you’re mad the government is buying twinkies, and I’m mad the government is buying security services from Haliburton in Iraq. We all have something to be mad about in the Federal budget, it’s fair to say. The fact that “we all pay for it” doesn’t make your opinion about expenditures righter than mine. Welcome to democracy.

I think you don’t give a shit about how our federal money is spent (since you didn’t even know SNAP is a federal program – call me crazy, but if you actually care this is a fact I think you would have investigated). I think you’re just mad, and have ridiculous ideas about poverty and hunger in this country, and would like to find someone to blame.

390

Community gardens are still mostly local, non-profit, grassroots concerns, and some even have conflicts with local governments, such as the South Central Farm. However, many if not most LA Unified elementary schools have food gardens. And Michelle Obama’s interest might eventually lead to some connection with Federal programs. Some states like New York allow EBT with farmers markets, but in my experience they cost more than the average supermarket. If they could extend that sentiment to community farming, using some of the same allocation for operations, they might be able to sell the fresh food at (minimal) cost to food stamp participants, and at higher prices to the general public.

391

Back in my cashiering days, it was also easier to qualify for - the income limit was higher than for food stamps or other forms of support. Does anyone know if this is still the case?

During training, I was told WIC covered infants, toddlers, and preschoolers but not six-year-olds because it was assumed that older children would be covered by free or reduced-price school lunches. No idea if this is really the point or if my manager was misinformed (or, for all I know, just making it up). WIC and Federally subsidized school lunches in the US have something else in common, as Broomstick mentioned - they tend to be heavy in the sort of foods that American farmers usually produce a surplus of. A cynical person might consider them a farm-subsidy program that coincidentally gives food to low-income people.

392

My mother got WIC when my sister was a baby, because Baby Sis was severely lactose intolerant, and had to have a special, prescription-only formula. And somehow, she qualified for WIC to pay for it. (Just for said formula, not anything else)

Did you miss the part where Broomstick said she was was allergic to black beans? :dubious:
Folks, I think it’s pretty much been established that there’s no “one-size-fits-all” situation here. It’s not so much, “why can’t I have CHEETOS AND PEPSI!!!” as it is, just let people make their own freaking choices. Just because people are on public assistance doesn’t mean they become children.
It’s also a case of being, as I said, “penny-wise and pound foolish”.

(And as far as lobster – aren’t there places in New England were you can get fresh lobster dirt cheap, since it’s local?)

393

Bolding mine again. That is clearly and undeniably what you said, go back and read it. If you meant something else then maybe you should have said something else.

I did not say that it was invariably cheaper to purchase ingredients.

Thank Gawd you’re here, because those of us with no common sense like me would never have figured out how to pair eggs with beans without putting them together.

Look, I get up every morning and go to college so that maybe one day I won’t live in this shithole neighborhood in this shithole house, constantly worrying about when I can have the leaky roof fixed and whether or not I can afford my medication this month. Then I go to work in a big factory where it’s 35 degrees and I’m wearing steel toed boots on a concrete and steel floor for 9 hours a night. I get home around midnight, and I dare some motherfucker to tell me that I have then got to stand on my feet in the kitchen and fucking cook something to eat every night. I dare somebody to come in here and tell me that I can’t have a glass of wine or a box of cookies over the weekend. That I can’t take some pre-packaged tuna salad to work for lunch. This isn’t about saving money it’s about making poor people miserable, because you all think they should be. It would be easier and more honest if you’d just admit it.

Also you have failed to answer my original question: HOW DO PEOPLE WITH NO ELECTRICITY COOK A POT OF BEANS? I am still waiting. A grill is not a valid answer, because obviously if they can’t afford lights they can’t afford to buy a grill.

394

You missed my point. I don’t see a difference between Federal, State, or local taxes. The revenue stream all comes the same place.

I’ve spent my entire life spending corporate money responsibly. I’ve argued with various accountants over loose change in a $10,000 transaction. I’m a trustee who has had to argue with other trustees who would liquidate the foundations funds in a week given the opportunity because they don’t understand by-laws or have a lick of common sense.

There is logic to the premise that micro-managing a program could cost more than it saves. That doesn’t mean common sense can’t prevail. Limiting the cost per lb of classes of food is a no-brainer. There is never a reason for public funds to be spent on liquor, steak, truffles or aged cheese. That costs nothing to implement. reducing garbage foods to something that resembles a nutritional intake is another function of responsible use of public funds.

It is arguable as to the complexity of the task. It would be a matter of establish a metric and then making it a requirement that companies certify their food to those standards. That cost is born against industry.

Potato chips are yummy bits of comfort just as cigarettes are but they are not good for people to consume. That doesn’t remove all snacks from the realm of public assistance but it does put the burden of nutrition on industry if they wish to tap into public funds. Moving it forward, the idea of cost affective nutrition to the poor could certify prepared foods if they meet a cost/nutrition metric.

395

Well, if you work 9 hours a night–even at minimum wage–you don’t even qualify for EBT, so I wouldn’t use myself as an example, if I were you. EBT is for the unemployed or those bound to the house by children–people who usually do and can have the time to cook.

396

Direct your ire at bailed out investment companies. They’re buying this stuff at restaurant prices, and writing it off as business expenses.

397

Your premise is a what-if strawman. What if they don’t have electricity and can’t walk? What if they’re stark naked standing in the middle of the street? There is no end to this game.

By the way, you can eat beans straight out of a can so you might as well throw in a “what if they don’t have a can opener”.

398

??? what? Are they using EBT cards?

399

Wait – one minute it’s junk food like ice cream or cookies, the next it’s aged cheese and steak (which is probably better for you, actually). So which is it?

Do you care about nutrition, or about expense? If people buy cheap junk food, is that okay?

400

EBT is income based. Until about… two years ago, minimum wage here was $5.15 an hour. I’m pretty sure I would have qualified. My ex husband qualifies and he’s in the freaking Army. But no, I’m not on food stamps and never have been.