# SNAP Budget Proposal - Is Individual Delivery of Food Packages Really Going to Save Money? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2018, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794 "2018-02-13T21:56:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/41 "2018-02-14T15:24:44Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > Believe whatever you wish, but I personally think graft is this man’s sole motivation. Sole… not likely. It has some minor distractive value from the ongoing Russian saga. Since I doubt this idea will ever get past the Twitter stage, temporary distraction might turn out to be it’s only value to Trump, though I can picture him fantasizing about the chance for personal enrichment for himself and his buddies. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/42 "2018-02-14T15:32:50Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Step 1: Acquire the food. > Currently supermarkets buy food to sell. They attempt to get food at low prices so they can make as much of a profit as possible. > In theory, the government could buy this same food at these same prices and avoid taking a profit, reducing the total cost to the consumer. > Or, alternatively, they could just set up some fat profitable contracts with food suppliers in return for ‘campaign donations’, with no particular concern for saving money. > > Step 2: Ensure the food is of decent quality. > Currently stores are motivated to screen their sellers for ones that provide bad food. This food is sold to everyone, and if it’s bad then the wealthy people who come will take their money elsewhere. > The government would be significantly less able to either screen sellers or change sellers if one was shipping rotten food. Also, with the massive amount of food being shipped it would be easy for the sellers to slip in their lesser-quality product among the rest – preventing that from happen would require frequent costly quality checks and audits, with punishments for infractions. That or the government could just choose not to care, allowing the sellers to use the system as a method for offloading lesser quality and/or rotten food without fear of reprisal. > > Step 3: Figure out where the food is supposed to go. > Currently people pick out their own food. It works great, except to observing assholes who think they should only eat dirt. The stores, for their part, only have to keep track of the total overall sales in their area to estimate how much food the area needs. This process is streamlined from a cost perspective. > Under the new system it would take a staggering amount of work to figure out which people get which food - which families are larger? Which people are gluten intolerant? Which people are diabetic? Which people have life-threatening allergies? Organizing this would require positively boggling amounts of bureaucratic effort and invasive tracking. It would probably cost more than the raw food does. > Or they could just ship everyone the same generic box of food-from-highest-donators without concerns about whether it’s enough to feed them or whether it will kill them. Peanut butter for all, yo! > > Step 4: Deliver the food. > Currently stores have food shipped to themselves via efficient trucks. Consumers fetch the food from there and deliver it to their own front doors for similarly low cost. > The government has a few potential approaches for this. The absolute dumbest would be to ship everything from the central warehouse via a private carrier - the costs would be staggering. (The politicians would get a nice ‘donation’ for that though.) The USPS could do this for closer to costs, but there’s no way they’d be as efficient as the stores themselves are. > > Summary of steps: > > - Maybe a little cheaper but probably more expensive. > - Way more expensive unless the government decides to ship people rotten food. > - Staggeringly more expensive unless the government decides to starve/kill people. > - More expensive, unless it’s WAY more expensive. > > Sounds like a great idea! Let’s do it! This is like a infomercial where people are unable to do a simple task without the gadget. All these concerns are trivially easy to solve. If the food arrives bad, the recipients can exchange the bad food, and let the program know. If there are too many complaints, cancel the contract and find a new provider. We already know who gets SNAP benefits and how many people are in their households. If they have allergies or intolerances that can easily be communicated when they sign up for the program. Those that do can be provided an alternate food. We already send them SNAP cards so instead of just a card, we send them a card and a box, mail order is a 130 year old concept that is pretty easy to do. Odd that many people who think the government can effortlessly run a universal health care system, also believe a mail order business is much too complicated. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/43 "2018-02-14T15:37:20Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Odd that many people who think the government can effortlessly run a universal health care system, also believe a mail order business is much too complicated. I think the idea is that it can’t do so and save money over the current system. Right now, we just issue a card and the market takes care of the rest. As you assume more and more tasks that the market is currently doing (and doing extremely efficiently), your costs will almost certainly go up. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/44 "2018-02-14T15:45:09Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This is like a infomercial where people are unable to do a simple task without the gadget. All these concerns are trivially easy to solve. > If the food arrives bad, the recipients can exchange the bad food, and let the program know. If there are too many complaints, cancel the contract and find a new provider. And how long will that return-and-exchange take? How long before a bad contract is cancelled? Meanwhile, people go hungry or eat bad food. > [@](#): > > We already know who gets SNAP benefits and how many people are in their households. If they have allergies or intolerances that can easily be communicated when they sign up for the program. Or we can let them go to a store and pick out their own food, letting them doing the avoiding and the choosing without the need for bureaucratic intervention. > [@](#): > > We already send them SNAP cards so instead of just a card, we send them a card and a box, mail order is a 130 year old concept that is pretty easy to do. Because it’s cheaper to just send them a card, and we only have to do that once. A box has to be sent every month and thus there is an ongoing monthly shipping cost. > [@](#): > > Odd that many people who think the government can effortlessly run a universal health care system, also believe a mail order business is much too complicated. No one thinks anyone - private or government - can “effortlessly” run a health care system. It’s just that the experiment of private vs. public has been run literally more than a hundred times and UHS wins every time on outcomes, extent of coverage, and overall costs. Likewise, the experiment of private vs. public food distribution has been run hundreds of times. Private wins. That’s why the Soviet Union wound up buying staple commodities from the US. In fact, it wins so much that _every_ centralized command economy has wound up either tolerating or allowing private food distribution and sale. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/45 "2018-02-14T15:46:16Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think the idea is that it can’t do so and save money over the current system. Right now, we just issue a card and the market takes care of the rest. As you assume more and more tasks that the market is currently doing (and doing extremely efficiently), your costs will almost certainly go up. Hm…maybe. But maybe not. Basically, I can see economies of scale type thingy happening here. If we allocate $X today and basically let someone choose what they want they are paying market price for whatever they are buying. But if we build meals for them we have a more directed market, so to speak. Plus, as a bonus, we could actually have the meals being prepared to be both more nutritious and probably taste better, though the former would be the most important thing. To me, the biggest issue is still the fact that not everyone has the facilities to make even a prepared meal. I’ve seen what some of those Blue Apron (and this would pretty obviously be a lower end concept to that) dishes entail, and you still need stuff like a stove and burners, pots and pans. I’m sure you could do a lot with pre-preparation that they don’t do so you wouldn’t need to cut stuff up and the like, but you’d still need some kitchen facilities unless we are talking about microwave meals or something…perhaps something like the militaries MRE system that has heating elements with it? Not sure but that’s going to be one of the big challenges, IMHO, at least for the concept. ---
**Author:** ![Mdcastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@Mdcastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdcastle)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/46 "2018-02-14T16:04:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Can I say, as a cashier who rings up SNAP purchases that by and large this is the case. If you’re poor enough to have the lion’s share of your monthly food paid for by SNAP, you _have to_ be disciplined in your choices in one way or another. Otherwise your have too much month at the end of your money. If a SNAP recipient does buy a steak (perhaps on sale) it’s more likely to wind up stretched into 2-3 meals (added to chilli, stew, stir fry) rather than grilled for just one meal. > > The nosy nellies are inclined to focus on the one steak or the bag of chips and ignore the beans, bread, and bag of oranges. That’s because there shouldn’t be _any_ amount of steak and chips in their cart, just beans, bread, and oranges. If the intent to make stew out of steak, isn’t buying stew meat at list price still cheaper per pound than on-sale steak? > [@](#): > > And, if a poor family is living on beans and rice 6 days out of 7 with oranges or apples for dessert and on Sunday want a whole chicken or a steak dinner I’m not going to get upset. That shows good planning and discipline and don’t we want to encourage that? No, it shows we’re giving them too much money if they can both eat basic meals and splurge, as opposed to just eating basic meals throughout the week and Sunday too. If they want to splurge they can get a job and earn money for a splurge. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/47 "2018-02-14T16:06:44Z")
“Market price” at the grocery store includes their whopping 4-5% profit margin. Given that most grocery stores are large national or regional chains, I think the economies of scale are already built in. They are feeding 80-90% of populace if we take out the SNAP part, so I’m not sure how you get more economy of scale with a smaller customer base. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/48 "2018-02-14T16:07:08Z")
There’s also the fact that 70% of SNAP recipients do in fact work. While I would prefer to eat healthy stir frys or soups/stews or casseroles for meals where I work the break room does not support actual cooking. When I worked on constructions sites the facilities were even more primitive, or even absent (some sites didn’t have running water or even toilets - because we were there to install them) Some of that junk/convenience food EBT recipients buy is stuff that requires neither cooking/heating nor cooling for lunch purposes. If your working outdoors in 90 degree heat you need something that isn’t going to go bad sitting in your vehicle a couple hours, and icepacks can only do so much. I might have a well-equipped kitchen, but I don’t have access to it while at work. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/49 "2018-02-14T16:14:18Z")
Considering the margins it might be more efficient to place restrictions such that a certain percent of the the EBT has to be used on certain foods. I’m not sure I’d agree to even this because it would probably emphasize price over nutrition. I wouldn’t be completely against it if it did place an emphasis on nutrition, except that, just like the wall, it is not accomplishing anything and costing more. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/50 "2018-02-14T16:16:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > “Market price” at the grocery store includes their whopping 4-5% profit margin. Given that most grocery stores are large national or regional chains, I think the economies of scale are already built in. They are feeding 80-90% of populace if we take out the SNAP part, so I’m not sure how you get more economy of scale with a smaller customer base. I’m making some large number of a small number of recipes using X, Y and Z ingredients as opposed to allowing someone to buy whatever they like at the same rate as everyone else pays. If I buy 10,000 lbs of beef, say, it’s going to cost me less per pound than going out and buying a pound of beef…no? Same goes for basically everything else. Seems obvious to me that you COULD do it this way, but you seem to think that wouldn’t be the case. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/51 "2018-02-14T16:17:47Z")
> [@Mdcastle](#): > > That’s because there shouldn’t be _any_ amount of steak and chips in their cart, just beans, bread, and oranges. If the intent to make stew out of steak, isn’t buying stew meat at list price still cheaper per pound than on-sale steak? Nope, not always. There are times when lower-grade steaks actually are cheaper than stew meat. This may be a loss-leader sale at a store, or it may be meat that is rapidly approaching the “must sell” date limit. My store has discounted meat on its last day of sale as much as 75%, and when they do that goes _fast_. Also, you try making a sack lunch out a bean-based meal. As I have noted, not everyone has access to kitchen facilities at lunch time. Chips and oranges are a better lunch than something that goes bad from lack of refrigeration. > [@](#): > > No, it shows we’re giving them too much money if they can both eat basic meals and splurge, as opposed to just eating basic meals throughout the week and Sunday too. If they want to splurge they can get a job and earn money for a splurge. 70% of SNAP recipients have a job, and thank Og for that otherwise they would have no money for soap, deodorant, or toilet paper. You have no way to know how much a food cart is being paid for by SNAP or by private funds unless, like me, you’re a cashier. Most carts it’s a mix so, in fact, quite a few of those “welfare steaks” are being paid for by money earned on a job. Also - as I said, I don’t have a problem with people being “rewarded” for good planning and budgeting by being able to eat slightly better on occasion. Planning and budgeting are essential life skills and no one should be penalized for doing that well. What a lot of people presume is a “basic” diet is actually not good at all for people with certain medical problems. I’m sure some sanctimonious assholes thought I was being wasteful by buying brown rice at three times the cost of white, but those same assholes would have bitched to high heaven if my diabetic spouse’s blood sugar swung out of control enough to land him in the hospital and his medical care cost taxpayer money. It’s a LOT cheaper to feed a diabetic whole grains and fresh/frozen vegetables and low-carb protein than pay for them to stay in the hospital (much less amputations, blindness, and dialysis from renal failure), but suck it up that the diet that keeps a diabetic healthy is going to cost more than rock-bottom highly-processed high-carb but very cheap crap. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/52 "2018-02-14T16:19:07Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Considering the margins it might be more efficient to place restrictions such that a certain percent of the the EBT has to be used on certain foods. I’m not sure I’d agree to even this because it would probably emphasize price over nutrition. I wouldn’t be completely against it if it did place an emphasis on nutrition, except that, just like the wall, it is not accomplishing anything and costing more. See, we _could_ change what foods are eligible via infrastructure already in place… and still not have to whip up a parallel food system. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/53 "2018-02-14T16:19:15Z")
Due to torrential rains, your Trumpcare package for March will be delayed for a week. We hope this doesn’t inconvenience you. Donald the benevolent. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/54 "2018-02-14T16:21:16Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think the idea is that it can’t do so and save money over the current system. Right now, we just issue a card and the market takes care of the rest. As you assume more and more tasks that the market is currently doing (and doing extremely efficiently), your costs will almost certainly go up. And furthermore, health care is something whose system is not working, whereas the current system for food distribution is, so fixing it would be fixing something that isn’t broken. Sticking to healthcare, this would be like Canadians proposing to move to a nationalized health care system in order to save costs instead of the current system of subsidizing private delivery. If many Americans were starving then it would be worthwhile to take a look at the system of food delivery, just like it is worthwhile to look at different systems of healthcare since many Americans are getting wholly inadequate healthcare. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/55 "2018-02-14T16:28:00Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > It is quite sad and seems hard to believe but, yes, many Republican proposals aim directly at punishment: punishment of the poor, punishment by skin color, punishment of groups or regions that tend to vote Democratic. Why does it seem hard to believe? ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/56 "2018-02-14T16:30:25Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Odd that many people who think the government can effortlessly run a universal health care system, also believe a mail order business is much too complicated. Wrong. It’s not effortless to run a universal health care system. The current system is fundamentally broken and a failure in many ways that most people across the political spectrum agree upon. The solution is up for debate. It’s not effortless to run a multi-million-customer national food distribution system. It is not clear what the “broken” part of the current system is, and/or how the proposed idea (I resist calling it a plan, as there isn’t one yet) is going to solve whatever that “broken” bit is. I’ll ask you, since maybe you know or understand: what is it about increasing the size of government in order to deliver beans, bread, and canned goods door-to-door that will deliver a 12.9 billion/year savings over having recipients go pick it up themselves at the store? I mean, if I were in charge of deciding whether to implement something like this, I’d want to see a business plan. Some real numbers. Some workflow examples, and clear and concrete benefits as compared to the current system. Don’t you want the same kind of analysis and thought put into a new multi-billion dollar project? ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/57 "2018-02-14T16:48:52Z")
Ideas like these are proposed by people who have no idea the challenges of being poor. Imagine a single parent working two jobs trying to deal with picking up a package at a distribution center or dealing with the package getting lost or stolen from their door. Getting food from a food bank is already a challenge because of lack of free time and transportation. Consider how this family may be in a continual state of moving between motels, friends houses, rental houses, and homelessness depending on income and available jobs. How will the package follow this family around when they don’t have a stable home address? If you want to come up with real solutions, watch documentaries like these to understand the situation better: [Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706603/) [Frontline: Poor Kids](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2475316/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3) Their housing situation is often very unstable. If food delivery was tied to their location, they would often miss out on having food. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/58 "2018-02-14T16:54:51Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > Ideas like these are proposed by people who have no idea the challenges of being poor. Imagine a single parent working two jobs trying to deal with picking up a package at a distribution center or dealing with the package getting lost or stolen from their door. Getting food from a food bank is already a challenge because of lack of free time and transportation. Consider how this family may be in a continual state of moving between motels, friends houses, rental houses, and homelessness depending on income and available jobs. How will the package follow this family around when they don’t have a stable home address? > > If you want to come up with real solutions, watch documentaries like these to understand the situation better: > > [Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706603/) > [Frontline: Poor Kids](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2475316/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3) > > Their housing situation is often very unstable. If food delivery was tied to their location, they would often miss out on having food. Yeah, logistics are another big concern for something like this. I agree I think this plan looks good to someone who doesn’t really know all of the issues of being poor. I don’t think the idea is necessarily a bad one…it COULD be something really useful, but I am pretty skeptical and there are some serious issues I see just looking at the thumbnail sketch of what the program might be. Also, I’m even more skeptical based on who is proposing this. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/59 "2018-02-14T17:06:11Z")
“I’m here to pick up food for my family” “I’m sorry, but it already got picked up/you aren’t on the list/you’ve been tagged for some unknown reason. I’ll need you to fill this out, and we’ll get back to you to make an appointment as soon as possible.” ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794/60 "2018-02-14T17:54:49Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > **Chips** and oranges are a better lunch than something that goes bad from lack of refrigeration. SNAP is for providing nutrition. Chips have very little to no nutrition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snap-budget-proposal-is-individual-delivery-of-food-packages-really-going-to-save-money/808794.md?page=4)