Probably because the grocery stores and manufacturers don’t pay them to do so. Coupons are not just a nice thing that newspapers put in their Sunday edition.
As stated at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - Food Research & Action Center, the goal of the food stamps program is “to alleviate hunger and malnutrition …"
Malnutrition includes excessive intake of empty calories. Short paragraph below from Malnutrition - Wikipedia singles out fast food as a main factor in this sort of malnutrition.
It certainly seems to me that excessive purchasing of junk food runs directly contrary to the goals of the program.
Also, this constant barrage of accusations of wanting people on the public dole to be miserable doesn’t add anything to this discussion. And considering I will be on the public dole in a few weeks, it is unlikely that is my motivation.
So you don’t care if kids are growing up obese and not learning about proper nutrition? I thought I was supposed to be the heartless one.
I don’t believe for one single nanosecond that this was the type of malnutrition they were worried about when they instituted food stamps. Not. One. Single. Second. Scurvy, yes. Obesity, no.
As I noted, if you actually gave two shits about kids growing up fat, you would care about all kids, and dismiss food stamps as an effective approach to the problem. So yeah - we’re equally heartless, blowing off all those kids not on food stamps. Except of course you’re denying food stamp kids cookies too.
And the fact that you’re going on the dole has nothing whatsoever to do with your ideas of what people on the dole should do. It just means that, unless you’re a hypocrity, that you will voluntarily hold yourself to the restrictive rules that you believe should be imposed on all people on the dole.
Now, I will concede that your goal might not consciously be their misery - it would instead be that they do not garner ‘undue’ pleasure by ‘abusing’ the system. Except that based on your position in this argument “undue” clearly means “what you get from any treats at all” and “abusing” clearly means “legitimately using”. Which means that, whether you realize it or not, your actual motivation is to place artifical constraints on the pleasure of the poor. And not because you care about kids. Note that there are no tenuous assumptions here about your motivations; it’s all pretty solid reasoning. Sorry.
I addressed you because you claimed superior knowledge about how much people should weigh. You are probably talking about someones opinion of how ideal weights would be calculated. How tall should you be? How intelligent should you be? What movies should you like? I can offer opinions in those areas, but you would be foolish to reconsider your life based on those opinions.
A person is ‘overweight’ when an accurate scale reads a greater number than would be calculated based on their mass, gravity, and other local physical phenomena. I’m sure you really mean people have an unhealthy weight, but then the definition of health is an opinion also. Your ideas might mean more to someone who cares more about physical characteristics and associates long life with… well what do you associate it with? I’m more concerned with things like under-honesty and over-selfishness. I am not referring to you at all, but in my frame of reference, concepts like over-weight seem funny.
Let’s try to go over this together, shall we? Gonzomax stated in post #543 that soon half of America would be overweight. That is 100% inaccurate. He was 100% wrong.
I responded to his post to let him know he was wrong and provided a cite with corrected information which states that over 60% of Americans are ALREADY overweight.
Now, you have said that I “claimed superior knowledge about how much people should weigh” and I would like to know if you’re reading the words on this page or if you’ve pulled this idea out of some other orifice?
Of course reading the rest of your quote is like being at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for those of us who live here on earth so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve incorrectly accused me.
You claimed that someone else was wrong, and then posted what you claim is a correction. Can you explain how that is not a claim of superior knowledge? The subject is overweight people. Do you claim at the same time not to know how much people should weigh?
Well I do throw great parties, but I didn’t accuse you of anything. I asked you how you knew how much people should weigh. I gave you credit for actually meaning something a liitle less irrational. Please tell me what was incorrect in my statements. You don’t have to share my priorities. I don’t have to share yours. But you sound like you have decided your priorities are the correct ones. Maybe that is not your intention. But I asked how you how you knew how much people should weigh. You still haven’t addressed that at all. Is it because you believe the government knows how much people should weigh? Or is it the doctors? Or is there some other way (groan) that you know?
Let me be clear and succinct. You, nor I, nor anyone else knows how much someone should weigh. If you have an opinion about the matter, you could at least explain it. I will assume from your cite that you think people should weigh what someone else has opined to be a healthy weight. I have a different opinion.
Let me see if I have this right. Gonzomax stated that SOON 50% of Americans would be overweight. You apparently had NO problem with that information as you didn’t ask him a damned thing about it. Knowing that according to nearly EVERY medical source I have read that measures such a thing says that he is wrong, I pulled not one but TWO cites and linked to them. Now you are saying that because I am showing cites from MEDICAL organizations that means that I think I’m an expert on how much people SHOULD weigh? Your train of logic stopped a few stops back.
If you disagree with the CDC or any other medical institution that documents the weight of Americans you can feel free to contact them directly and give them your odd perspective on how nobody gets to choose how much someone else weighs.
Gonzomax made a claim and backed it up with absolutely nothing. I showed him where his claim was incorrect by providing a cite. That’s how things work in discussions, especially in Great Debates. Read that as many times as you need to until you understand it.
How do I know how much people should weigh? Did you read the cite at all? I didn’t decide anything. In the first cite it was the Department of Health and Human Resources who decided after a study was performed. In my second cite was from the CDC who used the study performed by the National Center of Health Statistics. If you bother to read the cites you can see what they use as parameters and how they do their research. Please feel free to contact them directly if you want to make them laugh with your “Heyyy maaaan, who is to sayyyyy how much someone should weeeeiiighhh” Honestly, go for it.
You are neither clear nor succinct. Doctors and medical researches do know how much people should weigh and duhhhh of course it depends on different things for different people. I pity your health care providers.
So, following your dubious logic I submit that the link given earlier about the SNAP program has a BIG old fault in it. They say the program is “to alleviate hunger and malnutrition … by increasing food purchasing power for all eligible households who apply for participation” Holy crap, by your methods that’s all kinds of wrong. I mean, who is to say what is hunger? What YOU feel when you feel hunger is going to be different than what I feel and on and on. Also they say eligible households. Well shit, how are we going to figure out who is eligible? Who is to say how much someone should make? What is a livable salary to you is going to be different than a livable salary to me and so on. Great logic, huh?
I did not address Gonzomax in any way shape or form. I had the same problem with his response as yours. I did not say in any way, shape, or form that you are an expert. I said that you claimed superior knowledge to Gonzomax. If you don’t have superior knowledge, why do you say he is wrong? Do you misunderstand what the term ‘superior knowledge’ means? It is not an insult, it means that you claim to know more about something than someone else. And I don’t care how many doctors claim anything, or about any other bandwagon appeals either.
I do not disagree with the CDC about how much Americans weigh, and I did not in any way, shape, or form, address the matter of how much someone weighs. I addressed the subject of how much someone should weigh. Do you understand the difference?
I still do not care what Gonzomax said. It still has nothing to do with my comments to you. It has to do with your contention that people are overweight. If I had addressed Gonzomax directly, I would have said the same thing. If it makes you feel better, I will amend my comments to say that I disagree with both you and Gonzomax on the subject of how much people should weigh. Now read this ‘as many times as you need to until you understand it’: You claimed to have superior knowledge about this subject, which is why I addressed you.
Ah, an ad hominem attack. Neither the CDC nor NCHS posted to this thread. You did. Followed by the appeal to authority. But your cite didn’t define the term ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’. It presents statistics about how much people weigh, and categorizes them with those undefined terms. I’m sure if I dig deep enough, I will find those definitions. But I’m not declaring that they are authorities, you are. Is your answer to my original question that you know how much people should weigh because you believe someone else knows?
You are neither clear nor succinct.
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Which part did you not understand? In what part was I overly wordy?
Ok, so how do they know? Duhhhh.
You need only pity the ones I have rejected. They were very ill prepared to have someone question their dogmatic advice. The ones I stayed with are quite pleased to have a patient address their health on a factual basis. They are also considered among the best in their fields. It’s a little easier to get good doctors if used to work for Harvard Medical School. I’m not making an appeal to authority there. I just have access to good doctors, and take advantage of it.
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My logic is impeccable, whilst you rely on straw man arguments. I did not mention anything about hunger or livable salaries in my discussion with you. Yes there is all kinds of wrong with claiming to know how hungry someone else is, or how much a livable salary should be. But those are your claims, not mine.
You could have answered my question simply by stating that you don’t know how much people should weigh, but that you believe that the opinion expressed by the CDC is correct. We could then be discussing that matter. Instead you have launched an attack based on the fact that I did not address the equally unsubstantiated claim made by Gonzomax, and mischaracterizations of my responses.
I won’t hold it against you. I can be a hot-head too, and I admire your gumption. If you have any rational arguments to make for your case, I’ll address them seriously.
It does, but limiting foods that can be purchased is not the way they choose to try and alleviate malnutrition. They do that through education, which I think is the proper way since removing the ability to buy junk food with SNAP money does not actually remove the ability to buy junk food.
I am in the camp that thinks most people who advocate for something like removing the ability to purchase certain foods want to punish people that use SNAP, not help alleviate malnutrition. I think malnutrition wasn’t even brought up as a tie to obesity until there were questions about the mission of SNAP. Before that, the reasoning was just related to obesity. It seems like trying to create a legitimate reason to bar certain foods after already deciding that they shouldn’t get those foods for other reasons.
If you want to help alleviate malnutrition, you study the best ways to do that for the particular situation. I would hope SNAP has studied the effectiveness of their monetary benefits and education and have seen it helps alleviate hunger and malnutrition. Anything regarding obesity really is tangential and more in line with the missions of CDC, maybe NIH, etc.
SNAP teaches nutrition, but it’s not to prevent obesity it is to prevent malnutrition. Though it may help reduce obesity to teach nutrition, it isn’t really relevant to their mission. As related to nutrition, they’ve obviously decided for many reasons that providing benefits for any food while teaching nutrition and healthy eating makes a lot more sense then trying to dictate through policy what each person can eat.
If we limit junk foods, do those with high blood pressure get limited to foods with only a certain amount of salt? Do diabetics get an exemption from the junk food bans so they can have a source of quick simple carbohydrates in the event of hypoglycemia? I’m sure there are many other examples showing the complications of trying to dictate what people can buy with their SNAP benefits instead of giving them the tools they need to decide themselves. You know, the whole give a man a fish teach a man to fish thing?
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/457863/rates_of_obesity_increase_in_american_children_men/index.html What a strange game of quibbling you play. We agree that obesity is a problem. But there is plenty of disagreement of how to measure it and what the consequences are, I can dredge up lots of cites that argue whether we have achieved 50 percent or not. But that would be a different argument and a pointless one at that, since I assume we agree obesity is a growing problem in America.I see lots of sites today that claim 60 percent . If another study claimed 62 percent and you bought into it, would you claim the other one was 100 percent wrong. Or would you understand that regardless of which numbers you buy, the problem is obesity, not the difference in numbers?
I got the 50 percent from a site. I don’t know what the real percentage is, neither do you. I don’t accept any cite as definitive since they generally have an agenda.
Data & Statistics | Overweight & Obesity | CDC Here is the stats from the CDC. I assume you have heard of them. They are providing numbers, not selling products. Their percentages are much lower.
Of course I’ve heard of them. That’s why I cited them back in THIS post to show that it’s actually 68% of adults who are overweight. Of that 68% group it contains 34% who are beyond overweight and fall into the obese category. Perhaps you should check out both of our cites and see that your cite only strengthens the one I provided before. If you’re saying their numbers are lower you might be seeing their percentage for OBESE and not just overweight. However, you said overweight earlier so I’m afraid they still agree with the 68%
Funny that you call it quibbling because usually in Great Debates if you want to throw out a statistic people want to know if it’s accurate. That is quibbling? Also, earlier you seem to have been playing a game of “oh hai only poor people are fat rich people are perfect!” which seems to be your MO in this thread. Instead of offering actual arguments and exchanging ideas you post reactionary and (to be honest) foolish hyperbole designed to impugn anyone who doesn’t readily agree with what you consider to be correct.
If you really care about obesity levels (which seems doubtful as I suspect you’re just throwing it out there to be inflammatory) you’ll find that obesity is generally found to be more prevalent in the poor and that’s a worldwide problem, not just here.
Regardless, it’s a problem yet I personally do not think that is made worse by the food stamp program.
Still, no matter if I agree with you on many of these issues or not, I’ll give you credit that you’re not trying to throw up a wall of nonsense and pretend that it’s rational. Speaking of which… **
TriPolar**, it seems like you want to play semantics games and bring another argument into this entirely. This thread is about food stamps and not your very odd ideas that doctors do not have any idea how much people should weigh. A claim was made about obesity in America and I gave information showing that claim to be incorrect. I honestly could not care less what your ideas are about how doctors are wrong and you fire the ones who don’t agree with you and blah blah blah. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand and it isn’t even slightly interesting or original. It’s wonderful that you feel you have great (the best!) doctors for your physical health. I hope you have experts for more than physical needs that you can go see.
I’m not playing semantic games, and I don’t know what you are doing. The thread is about people only being allowed to buy ingredients with food stamps. You made a statement claiming that people are overweight, and you haven;t been able to explain or justify that statement. I did nothing but ask you a question, which apparently you are unable to answer. All of my other comments were in response to illogical and irrelevant statements you made regarding my question. If you weren’t interested in my response to those statements, why did you post them?
If you don’t know what you are talking about, just say so. I would gather that since you can only respond to a my simple question with ad hominem attacks, and misrepresentations of my statements, and denial of your own statements, that anything else you have posted on this matter should be disregarded as invalid.
I’m sure the mods would complain if I insulted you, as you have feebly attempted to do to me. But you would be deserving of it. Don’t claim superior knowledge of a subject you are unable to address in any manner.
A claim was made about the percentage of overweight Americans and I came in and gave a corrected figure for the percentage. THAT IS ALL. You seem to want to turn it into a debate on what constitutes being overweight. If you want to debate that, start your own thread. In your strange little world giving a cite that ANYONE can google is making a claim of superior knowledge. I really don’t think you get how odd that sounds. Someone linked to the SNAP program earlier to show what their guidelines are. Applying your strange “logic” that makes that person an expert on the SNAP program. Hell, they should apply for a job with them!
Blah blah blah ad hominem attacks. Feel free to insult me (mods, let him at it!) because I would consider it on the same level as a homeless person raving about the end of times and give it exactly that much consideration.
You’re wanting to hijack this conversation about food stamps into a discussion about whether or not doctors and medical researchers are qualified to say what it is to be overweight? That has NOTHING to do with the discussion at hand, absolutely nothing. Start a new thread for your hijack.
Why do you insist on displaying your ignorance and lack of reasoning skills? Your notion that people can be overweight is irrational, and thus a hijack of a discussion of food stamps. Why don’t you just inject the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny into a discussion about food stamps? You can Google those topics as well. Again, don’t inject statements into a discussion that you can’t back up. You don’t seem to have any idea what your cite was about. You continue to characterize my logic as anything other than correct. Can you show me a single illogical statement I have made? Your false statements regarding mine and your unrelated analogies still do not address the fact that you claimed superior knowledge about the subject of overweight people, and you have yet to make a single substantive statement in defense of that claim. Start a new thread for your imagined offense, and stop attacking me. I well respond to every one of your dishonest claims about my posts, and your failure back up your claims.
I am quite willing to discuss food stamps, and anything that the concept of overweight people has to do with that subject, as I attempted to do originally, as soon as you can think of a response on that subject. It is you, not I, who continue to address irrelevant issues.
I feel fairly sure that you know you are wrong, because you continue your irrational responses. I’m sorry if I’ve been using big words and advanced concepts that are confusing you, so I’ll try to phrase this in very simple terms:
The food stamp program has nothing to do with how much people weigh. You do not have a means of defining an ideal weight for a person that is not based on opinion. You are offering an opinion as justification for another opinion (about food stamps, in case you lost track). If you don’t have any facts that address either topic, you should qualify your statements (that means add something like IMHO so that we can tell if you understand the difference between fact and fiction), and not correct others. Making dishonest attacks against people who disagree with you, point out your mistakes, or simply ask you questions, reflects poorly on yourself, and does not serve the discussion in this thread.
You make me laugh. Deep down laughing, so thank you for that But here’s just one!
So it is irrational to say that people can be overweight? Huh. Amazing!
Keep it up and I’ll keep laughing at you. I didn’t introduce anything about weight into this topic. People had been batting that around long before I gave the cite about the percentage of Americans who are overweight so once again you are WRONG. You have only decided to get your panties in a twist about it when I brought a cite into the mix. If you don’t agree with the cite I have provided then please feel free to give us documentation on how that cite is wrong. And please, documentation is not “I don’t think I’m fat so I fired my doctor who says I am and found someone who will agree with me” because that’s not fact. That’s lunacy.
Sorry but I’m going to go with the medical community and my education when it comes to ideas about health and not a nutbag on the internet. I’m afraid that the train of thought you present is something that’s familiar to me. It sounds like the same kind of “sense” people are making right before the Haldol kicks in.
So if you think that means you are the “winner” of this conversation then embrace your win! You, sir, are correct in the notion that it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to be considered overweight. Weight is now unable to be quantified so sayeth TriPolar. Best of luck to you and your brave new ideas about medicine and health.
The term overweight presumes that there is an ideal weight (or weight range) that can be determined for individuals, sometimes based on consideration of other factors. The best definitions of that ideal are based on opinion, and the worst are simply fabricated. The numbers change frequently, as do the statistics, based on unsusbtantiated claims even within their own narrow contexts. If there were any basis to this idea, someone would have provided a consistent definition of that ideal. Is it health, life-span, physical appearance? Which one is your opinion based on? I feel sorry for you if you think pseudo-science is rational.
You still have a problem understanding the English language. I did not say you introduced weight into the issue. I said that you claimed to have superior knowledge about this subject, and then asked you a question to see if you could establish that knowledge. The cite you provided is nothing more than random, unqualified numbers. Apparently you are unable to analyze information and lack critical reasoning skills. You still do not understand the difference between fact and opinion. In what way am I wrong? You have not yet provided any explanation of how a person can be determined to be overweight. I’m positive that you do not have a clue how the opinions of others you cited were even justified in their own terms.
Your lies are getting bolder. My ‘panties are not in a twist’, I did not state anything about my weight, or firing doctors that disagreed with. Those are complete fabrications. You made the cite. It is not a complete statement about anything. It is a set of unqualified charts. It contains no definitions. I imagine you found something on the net with a number in it, and felt that was sufficient to claim superior knowledge about this subject. I have given you every opportunity to validate your claim, but your only responses have been attacks against me for asking you a question, and some insane inclusion of Gonzomax and my doctors in your attempt to avoid admitting that you have no idea what you are talking about.
So in the end you are claiming superior knowledge base on the claims of others. Claims which you cannot provide relevant detail for, do not understand, and have not investigated in terms of their veracity. And each time I point out your lack of intellectual substance, you resort to insult and attack. Each time giving greater opportunity to point out that you are ignorant and unable to provide rational arguments in defense of your statements.
I’ll try to explain this to you, but I doubt you have the capacity to understand.
- Conversations cannot be won. Debates can have an established criteria upon which a winner could be determined, but I am not debating you. I asked you a question, which you have not answered, and I am responding to your ludicrous and unprovoked statements about me.
- I did not say that is impossible for someone to be considered overweight. Those are your words. I asked you how you knew that someone was overweight. Not how you considered the same. Words have definitions, and those can be found on the internet as easily as random selected statistics.
- I did not say that weight could not be quantified. A dictionary would help you increase your level of comprehension. I do contend that weight cannot be qualified as being over or under, without a definition of the ideal weight that it is compared to. I do not believe such an ideal has been logically, rationally, or scientifically defined. I keep giving you opportunites to do so, but as previously stated, I will take your failure to do so as a lack of ability on your part. And I am giving you a lot of credit for not having bad intentions.
It would seem that most would not want people in America to starve to death. But if they are getting your tax money ,they should look more like the people who were in concentration camps. They should be waiflike. If they are pudgy, that would indicate they are overfed . My tax money should not support people in such grand fashion.
A debate about how you can tell who is overweight completely misses the point. Which is exactly what you are doing.
HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost Here is a guy who understands the spirit of the argument. Get the poor away from us. Put them in prisons and teach prison guards to give them their superior judgement. teach them hygiene too. They know so little about how they should act.
“underused state prisons” 
Wicked! I must laugh. The US is slipping - I thought they were champions at incarceration, now I learn there are vacancies. I’d like to see this Paladino character survive on food stamps for a month at the said institution - I’m tickled to learn that toilet paper and soap are not allowed.