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

Great Debates
542

The government isn’t responsible for providing you ho-hos, but it’s not responsible with ensuring you don’t buy ho-hos, either.

What, precisely, is wrong with frozen corn dogs? I mean, aside from the fact that they aren’t terribly useful to somebody without a freezer and microwave. They’ve got protein and carbohydrates, don’t they?

Okay, they’re not a perfectly balanced sci-fi nutrition pill. But then, nothing is, and they could certainly be worse. Especially considering how quick and easy they are to prepare.

Your cite doesn’t say why they’re fat. Maybe it’s because they can’t afford stairmasters. Or maybe it’s because they’re carb-loading on wheat germ because it’s cheap. (It’s certainly cheaper than potato chips.) Or maybe it’s because they’re sitting around drinking booze.

I still don’t believe that you have kids whose parents are pouring them bowls of ho-hos for breakfast. Based on your cite I’d guess television to be the culprit, myself.

Again, I think this is a red herring. The existence of ho-hos is not the cause of the nations fat emidemic - for one thing, ho-hos and their ilk have been around forever.

Because you need a somewhat-stocked kitchen and time to cook to make tasty food from cheap ingredients. You’re dissing frozen corn dogs - what do you expect them to eat, pray tell? Would you accept Captain Crunch, or is that too sugary for you? Unsugared corn flakes, maybe? Dirt perhaps?

Funny, I’m still not worried about this. Especially since you can get fat on anything if you eat enough of it.

It’s pretty compelling, ain’t it? Especially over the “we’re suddenly worried about their weight” argument, which frankly pings loud and clear on my ‘BS’ meter.

Some people drown themselves in junk food, but if you think it belongs in the same sentence as those who drown themselves in alcohol, then your impression of junk food’s effect on people is severely skewed.

543

Come on, that doesn’t even make sense. The government is not ensuring they don’t buy ho-ho’s – they are perfectly free to buy ho-ho’s just like anyone else. They are just not given FREE ho-ho’s.

I am not going to give you a free sailboat. Does that mean I am oppressing you by ensuring you don’t get a sailboat?

Oh, they could be fine. I’m not even sure I’ve eaten a corn dog. I was just casting about for the name of a junk food, and I’d already used ho-ho’s, twinkies, cookies and ice cream. Please don’t mistake that as a main point in my argument.

I don’t know, I suspect you could find a lot of evidence linking obesity in kids to poor diet. You really think that isn’t a factor?

Maybe in theory. It sure is a hell of a lot easier to get fat on junk food though. You’re not denying that, are you?

Well, sure. I don’t think anybody was arguing that it would be an easy fix. Seemed the main argument was should we try to fix it.

You are not troubled at all by the poor health of kids these days? Especially minorities? Hell, a lot of people here are really concerned that some poor person might not get free cookies. The health of children seems like something much more significant to be concerned about. Why is that so hard to believe?

544

Dude, the government never gives anyone free ho-hos. If you want to pretend that giving you money is the same as giving you ho-hos, then yes, the government is indeed neither responsible for giving you ho-hos nor for not giving you ho-hos. Because in reality, it’s not giving you ho-hos at all. It’s giving you money - and as far as ho-hos are concerned, it doesn’t care if you buy them or not.

And that argument is…we don’t know what foods are good for people, except in terms of sound bytes. “Ho-hos”. “Twinkies”. “Cookies”. “Ice cream”. “Corn dogs”. The details don’t matter; we just want to ban things that sound “bad”. For some definition of “bad”, which may or may not have more to do with taste than health value. Or possibly easiness - we like our poor people to have to work for their food, since making ramen is too damned easy for them.

That’s the point I got from that.

Tell you what - I’ll concede it, squared. Every child who eats a ho-ho dies.

I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, the parents can still feed them ho-hos, if we allow anyone to feed them ho-hos. Why? Because if you really cared about the kids, you’d care about all the kids, and try to ban all ho-hos. But it sounds to me you only care about poor kids, and such a bias seems unlikely to be particularly centered around increased concern for their well-being over that of the average non-poor child.

Fix what? Poor Kids being allowed to ever have cookies?

Because if you really cared about the kiddies, you’d care about all of them. Not just the poor ones.

545

I think we’ve started to go around in circles at this point. But let me just clarify a couple of things:

(1) You’ve said you would see it as a problem if somebody was spending their food stamps on alcohol. Why is that? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the money is then not serving the purpose it was intended?

(2) Do you see it as a problem (regardless of how often you think this occurs) if somebody (with children) is spending the bulk of their food stamps on junk food?

546

2a. I’m not sure you’ve shown there is a significant fraction of people on food stamps that spend the bulk of their food stamps on junk food.
2b. I’m damn sure you have yet to give a good definition of junk food.

547

Junk food is what he says it is. It is what the high falooting types say it is. Soon half of America will be overweight. But the poor are stupid for being overweight and out of shape. All the middle class and above, work out and stay in great shape.

548

A couple of points:

The purpose of food stamps is to keep people from starving, and to maintain a strong economy in food products, benefitting manufacturers, distributers, and farmers. I’m sure that regulations on the type of foods that can be bought with food stamps would quickly be subverted by lobbyists for the food industry.

I don’t know how things work now, but before the EBT cards, food stamps were paper, that were traded like money. You didn’t know how the person in front of you got the food stamps. I don’t know about the legality of trading food stamps, but I know someone who owned a grocery store in a poor neighborhood in NYC. His store could only cash in a certain dollar amount of food stamps per month. He could have stopped accepting food stamps when the limit was reached, but instead he took them and bought his own groceries with them. He knew people at the grocery store thought he was a free-loader when he bought expensive items for himself. He also knew that if he stopped accepting the food stamps someone would go hungry, and if he lost enough business, it might be him.

549

Are you guys still in here? Wow.

550

How wrong you are. 64% of Americans are already overweight. But please don’t let that stop you from your same song and dance.

551

How do you know if someone is overweight? What weight are they supposed to be?

552

Are you serious?

553

Ok, I have to assume you’re being serious even though it’s hard for me to believe that someone needs to ask that question, but here is more information from the CDC and they are saying it’s actually 68% who are overweight with half of that (34%) being in the obese category. If you want details you can click their source link but be warned, it is a pdf.

Funny that you didn’t question the person who gave INCORRECT info when he said that soon half of Americans will be overweight but you want to ask the person who has a cite. Huh. It wouldn’t be because he falls on your side of the argument, would it?

554

I’m certain the poor would be allowed to eat grits, right? But would polenta be too fancy for them?

Pop quiz!
Which is the junk food?

1 ingredients: … corn …, vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: corn, cottonseed, sunflower, soybean or canola oil), whey, salt, cornstarch, calcium carbonate, buttermilk, cheddar cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), monosodium glutamate, artificial color, milk, calcium and sodium caseinates (milk derived), butter oil, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 lake, lactic acid, natural flavors.

2 ingredients: … corn …, cheese flavor blend (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, corn syrup solids, cheddar cheese [pasteurized milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes], salt, food starch - modified, sodium caseinate, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed soy protein, natural and artificial flavors, monosodium glutamate, sodium citrate, yellow 5, yellow 6, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, yellow 5 lake, yellow 6 lake), salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, calcium carbonate, nonfat dry milk, natural and artificial flavors, mono and diglycerides, sugar, reduced iron, niacin, bht and citric acid (as preservatives), thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid.

CMC fnord!

Nope, in fact you’ve already been given permission to spend $40 on junk earlier in the thread! Enjoy. :smiley:

555

So you agree that it would be a problem though? At least we have that.

You’re right, I have not shown that it is a significant problem. I have no idea of the statistics. The premise of the debate (from the OP) was that this is something that does happen – what to do about it? If it actually doesn’t happen, then nothing needs to be done. I agree completely.

My argument was with those who took the angle that even if the bulk of food stamps were being spent on junk food, that it was their right – poor people are entitled to junk food and anyone who says otherwise simply hates poor people.

As for 2b, you are correct again. I have consistently stated that reforming food stamps in the way we have been discussing would be very difficult. That doesn’t mean that solutions shouldn’t be proposed and critiqued.

556

I swear, you people take some strange angles in this debate. I mean, I guess its true; we’ve never defined the criteria for being overweight or formally defined being obese as undesirable – do we really need to? Seriously?

Look, there are two pretty powerful arguments for not reforming the program:

(1) it’s not really being abused to the extent suggested, and
(2) it would be too difficult to reform it.

These are the things that it would interesting and worthwhile to delve into.

Unfortunately, its difficult to read what people are saying about these issues as you have to scroll through pages and pages of blatant and silly mischaracterizations “So you’re saying that they should eat only uncooked beans and dirt from a bucket?” and ridiculous personal attacks “anyone who doesn’t think cookies should be purchased with food stamps has the main goal of making life miserable for poor people.” I really don’t think this adds to the debate.

557

Sure, and why not insist they only get bread and water? Or perhaps you’ll be so noble to make an exception for fried chicken and watermelon???

558

Dear god, another one…

Look, I know you don’t really think that the only alternative to junk food is bread and water, so why say it?

And why are you trying to add a racial element to this discussion?

What has happened to this board?

559

Yes.

However, I don’t accept your assumption that food stamps aren’t intented to buy treats. They’re meant to buy food. Cookies are perhaps inferior food, depending, but they’re still food.

As far as I’m concerned this whole “purpose it was intended” line of argument you are using can do nothing but backfire on you. In actual fact the government doesn’t care what kind of crap you eat, so long as you eat. A person who lived only on cookies would avoid starvation (though scurvy might be a problem), and thus the purpose of the food stamps would be served. This idea you have that food stamps are meant to put the poor on diets is a product of your own fantasy - or by my guess, your desire to stop having the poor people be happy while on the public dole.

Nope. What other people feed their children is pretty much the definition of Not My Problem, as long as the kids eat something.

Plus you don’t give enough data here anyway. Junk food is expensive, relatively speaking - if a person spent 49% of their food stamps on extremely cost-effective healty ingredients and then buys a cake with the surplus, then the kids could actually still be getting a relatively healthy diet when the dust settled.

560

Well that’s just begging the question. You can’t measure abuse until you define it, and dispute over that definition has been the bulk of this thread.

561

My bags from the local food bank always include a book of McDonald’s coupons. Junk food, maybe, but I image that many poor chldren are elated to actually be able to eat at MickeyD’s.

I wonder why the local newspaper doesn’t include the Sunday coupons in food bank packages. I’m going to emal them to suggest it.