Should Food Stamps Exclude Unhealthy Purchases?
Food policy blogger Tom Laskaway argues that “food stamp benefits should be reserved for whole, nutritious foods — meats, grains, dairy, fresh fruits and vegetables. Such a common-sense position should be entirely uncontroversial. Shame on us that it is not.”
In characterizing the debate about this proposition, he writes:
Anti-poverty programs in this country currently operate from the premise that poor people cannot be trusted with cash benefits and as a result such programs come with strict eligibility and performance requirements. Food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) have been politically sustainable precisely because they are not cash transfers, and thus can’t be “misspent” by the “idle,” “improvident” or “uneducated” poor people to whom they are given.
Why, then, the furor over reform proposals that would allow the food stamp program to favor — even subsidize — the purchase of healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables over snacks and soda?
Could this controversy result from a belief on the part of pundits and policy makers that being poor in America means acquiescing quietly to a substandard diet? Healthy foods, in this line of reasoning, are a luxury that should be reserved for those who can afford them. As unjust as this sounds when presented so baldly, it is exactly this belief that underlies attempts to deny government the right to make good nutrition a cornerstone of the food stamp program.
It is hard for me to imagine anyone arguing that healthy food should be reserved for the rich. Has any “pundit or policy maker” ever done so? But it is very easy for me to imagine why plenty of Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of government getting into the food police business even more than is already the case, and reacting against the paternalistic assumptions embedded in the idea that Congress best knows what poor people should eat.
Yes, I see the counterarguments: obesity is a huge problem among America’s poor, lots of kids are being given unhealthy food without any ability to make better decisions, etc. While I am all for efforts that endeavor to give these people access to fresh fruits and vegetables, however, I see a gradual, perhaps unstoppable increase in the number of things government funding touches, and I want to resist the notion that all these things justify paternalistic interventions in our lives, or the lives of folks who rely on government, and I imagine that most people who resist tying food stamps to specific, bureaucrat approved foods have similar concerns. And I’ll bet these same people would be very much in favor of ending the corn and sugar subsidies that play a far larger role in America’s obesity problem. You might say that thus far the government is at least as much the problem as it is the solution.
Food stamps should definitely pay subsidized prices for whole, nutritious foods. I don’t think they should be prevented from being used to purchase Doritos. The problem now is that the government subsidizes Doritos. Does it put the government in the food police business to stop doing that? How so? Why aren’t they in the food police business already, given billions in corn subsidies? Given that the USDA is the nation’s largest single farmer?
— Chet · Dec 8, 07:57 PM · #
I, too, am not in favor of what this guy is proposing. That said, there’s some logical jiu-jitsu going on in your argument, Conor. You say that government getting involved in the eating choices of people on food stamps is undesirable, and you connect it to a “gradual, perhaps unstoppable increase in the number of things government funding touches.” But of course government funding already touches people getting food stamps and what they consume, and the argument is that if government is already buying food for people they might as well use that opportunity to privilege healthier eating choices.
By the way— you rely on government too. So do the Front Porchers, the Randians, the minarchists, all of us.
— Freddie · Dec 8, 08:22 PM · #
Freddie,
I agree that the government is already involved in food stamps and that I rely on government for some things — hence my resistance to the idea that whenever government is involved in funding anything, it should maximize its paternalistic influence. In other words, I think we agree. Perhaps there is some other flaw in my argument, but I am not sure what you mean when you complain about jiu-jitsu.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Dec 8, 10:17 PM · #
he who pays the piper, calls the tune. if we want these people to be healthy citizens, we can decide how our money is spent.
— jamie · Dec 8, 10:22 PM · #
1) I am in favor of replacing food stamps with money. I see no reason why they should be limited to food at all.
2) However, if we really are going to limit what people can buy with them, then I think it makes sense to cut out the cr*ppiest foods. Why can food stamps be used to buy Fritos and not cigarettes? I say preferably both, but failing that, neither.
— J Mann · Dec 8, 10:23 PM · #
I love how conservatives force these concessions, then complain that they violate some principle of consistency.
— Chet · Dec 8, 10:40 PM · #
When the government provides a safety net, it should chafe as much as possible. Gross paternalism chafes the prostrate subject; it therefore provides a great incentive to stand up.
Conservatives disfavor handouts, and they disfavor paternalism. But when the safety net is given — as it is with food stamps — the principled conservative position is a burdensome welfare with rules targeted at Utility.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 8, 11:01 PM · #
So say yes to heavy-handed handouts, Conor. It’s the socially responsible position.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 8, 11:08 PM · #
Kristoffer,
We’re all increasingly being put above that safety net, whether we like it or not. If gross paternalism is attached to it, then we’re all going to be subject to it, and that is something I’d rather do without.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Dec 8, 11:46 PM · #
Incidentally, I’m with William F. Buckley— the greater part of the expense of food stamp programs comes from the efforts to verify that the people receiving them are indeed poor, so it behooves us to simply make food stamps available to anyone who applies and save money.
— Freddie · Dec 8, 11:52 PM · #
Functionally, I think you have that backwards. When a safety net limits agency in favor of utility, extending the net intact to the rest of society is a political no-no.
Look at the healthcare debate. If you remove all the chafing paternalisms from the various proposals, would passage of reform be 1) less likely, or 2) more likely? More likely, right?
Which point of contention is most salient for the populist opposition, cost curves or death panels?
The conclusion is inescapable. If you want to make sure that we’re not “all increasingly being put above the safety net,” the best strategy is to build a safety net with clearly visible and chafing paternalisms.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 9, 12:34 AM · #
I favour a negative income tax, personally. But it seems to me that Connor has not stated the strongest argument against “encouraging” or requiring food stamp recipients to buy healthy food. The definition of healthy food varies from person to person. Virtually no foods exist that everyone has the ability to digest, and many people have lethal allergies to otherwise generally “healthy” foods. Nor does the problem end there: you can only make a healthy meal if you have the resources to prepare and serve it, and poor people, more than others have all sorts of constraints of their ability to prepare food, from time to education to kitchen facilities. Prepared foods solve these problems, usually with slightly (or extremely) less “healthy” ingredients. Add in the mix religious and cultural prohibitions, and you create a nightmare for the administrators tasked with producing an approved foods list, the workers charged with enforcing the restrictions (I picture a social worker trying to tell a harried and desperate mother that of course she can cook a full and appealing meal on a single hot plate) and, not least, for the recipients themselves.
— John Spragge · Dec 9, 01:06 AM · #
The bailouts were another example. Treasury was attaching strings left and right, which made getting a bailout much less attractive. Many banks turned down the money or paid it back hurriedly to avoid being under Uncle Sam’s thumb.
To keep emergency plan B a road less traveled, plan B must be more costly than plan A. Subtracting degrees of freedom is an excellent way to do it.
Further, subtracting degrees of freedom in pursuit of rationality (a rational actor would choose healthy food) and utility is the most marketable justification in a liberal democracy.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 9, 01:13 AM · #
“shame on us… for letting poor people make choices — let’s fix that right away.”
— Brian Moore · Dec 9, 03:47 PM · #
Chet writes:
I have no idea what that means in this context. Am I “forcing” a “concession”, then complaining that the concession violates a “principle of consistency”? What concession, what force, and what complaint?
— J Mann · Dec 9, 04:31 PM · #
Thank you, Chet! People LOVE to forget that the food industry is already heavily subsidized, thus driving (through economics) food choices not toward healthy choices, but profitable choices. All libertarians and conservatives should be supporting an immediate end to food subsidies.
— Ray Butlers · Dec 9, 05:20 PM · #
Let’s start with this. Do you think a program to simply give money to poor people, with little or no restriction on its use, could possibly have ever been approved by conservatives?
— Chet · Dec 9, 06:02 PM · #
I was out of collage poor, watched what I spent on food very closely, and used to chafe when I’d see someone buying tasty things with food stamps that I’d forgo.
Then one day I was in line, and the woman ahead of me had a couple of kids and a couple of trinket (Doritos, Oreos, I don’t remember) and was paying with foodstamps, and I thought, “If this woman meets the poverty requirement, do I really want to be the guy that says, “Sorry kids, no Oreos with your (WIC purchased) milk.”?
What’s next, brown rice but not white rice? 2% milk, but no whole milk (and heaven forbid light cream for your coffee. Oh right, no coffee either.
A thought:
“It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a pundit to get into heaven.”
— Tony Comstock · Dec 9, 06:12 PM · #
Chet – Yes. It’s called the earned income tax credit, and it has at least as much conservative support as food stamps.
I would still appreciate a little clarification. What concession did I force, how did I force it, and how did I then complain that the concession violated my principles?
— J Mann · Dec 9, 07:22 PM · #
Two points:
1. J. Mann is right. Conor’s argument against “healthy” food stamps is an argument against any food stamps at all. To be consistent, Conor should only support cash.
2. Two out of three of J. Spragge’s points are absurd. 1. He argues that not everybody is able to digest all foods. Do you know anybody who can only digest junk food? 2. He argues that religious and cultural prohibitions are problematic. Is there any religious or cultural tradition that is limited to junk food? 3. His third argument is rational: that many poor people have problems with cooking food. This is true, but I refer him to Maimonides’ eighth degree of charity.
— Joe S. · Dec 9, 07:25 PM · #
So, by that you mean it’s subject to nearly constant invective and demagoguery. Yes, that’s kind of what I was getting at. You’ve demonstrated exactly what I was talking about – the conservative criticism of food stamps is it’s too restrictive and should be more like the EITC, and the conservative criticism of the EITC is that it’s too open and unrestrictive, and should be more like food stamps.
— Chet · Dec 9, 08:29 PM · #
Joe’s argument would hold water if he could separate my points, but they all apply, simultaneously, to each item of food on any “allowed” list. A list of approved foods only has value if most food stamp recipients could use them to make a meal that simultaneously satisfied all the following conditions:
1) Digestible; plenty of people cannot digest a range of “nutritious” foods.
2) Preparable using a limited range of utensils and with limited knowledge and access to information.
3) Acceptable to cultural and religious norms.
4) Preservable with limited food storage facilities: someone in a motel room with a bar fridge may have a real problem keeping “whole foods” and meats fresh.
Plenty of “non-junk”, “healthy” foods satisfy one or two criteria, but for the proposal at issue to work, some committee would have to draw up a sufficiently broad list of foods to satisfy all four criteria for the majority of recipients, local welfare offices would have to explain the regulations, and millions of store clerks would have to enforce it.
As for Maimonides and the degrees of charity, my church supports a community food centre with a comprehensive set of educational and social programs, from cooking classes to urban farms, aimed at ensuring community food security. Every city should have such institutions, but that does not mean a set of rules made by a political process at the American Federal government can fix the eating habits of poor Americans.
— John Spragge · Dec 9, 10:03 PM · #
I don’t think we’re talking about an “allowed” list. We’re talking about subsidizing vegetables and meats instead of Doritos, like we do now. (I love Doritos, sorry to keep picking on them.)
Food stamps are all computerized now, anyway. You don’t have to do any of this, just put it all in a database. The point-of-sale system determines which foods are food stamps-approved, deducts their total from the preloaded food stamps card, and then rings up everything else with the same purchase options you or I have. That’s how you wind up seeing people using food stamps to “buy cigarettes”; the cash register is keeping two separate tabs. Since it’s already being done by computers, why not have them charge less for vegetables and more for Doritos?
— Chet · Dec 9, 10:56 PM · #
In general, I don’t like the government banning or regulating the purchase of things, an in particular foodstuffs. A certain degree of safety regulation is important but beyond that, I would like to be able to buy transfat-loaded food if I so choose.
At least with my own money.
But if I’m accepting government subsidies, I think it’s pretty appropriate for the government to tell me how I’m going to spend the money. Taking money from the government ought to be irritating and come with strings attached, and this should be true of rich banks as much as poor people.
— TW Andrews · Dec 10, 06:09 PM · #
“…food stamp benefits should be reserved for whole, nutritious foods — meats, grains, dairy, fresh fruits and vegetables.” I think that pretty well defines a list of approved foods. And the line that “you” do this stuff by computer just about sums up the whole problem: “you” just promulgate the policy and load up the database, and we let some store clerk we’ll never meet deal with a weeping overworked woman who desperately wants to keep her family together, except that her eight year old had explosive diarrhoea last time she ate those “healthy” “whole” grains, and her twelve year old will not eat broccoli and the motel will throw them out if the hot plate smokes up the room again, and anyway her two part-time jobs don’t leave her with time to cook from scratch, so losing the ability to stretch her food dollar to cover foods she can actually cook, and which her family will actually eat, creates a real hardship. But we don’t have to, or want to, know anything about any of this, because the public policy process and computer technology insulate us from it. And using the public policy process and computer technology to buffer ourselves from the anguish our social policies cause, and which most of us profit from, abuses both the technology and the public policy process, and it profoundly degrades us.
You can’t use computer technology to do something about the nutrition problems of the poor. You have to shake their hands, look in their eyes, struggle with their languages, find out which foods they and their children can and will eat, and work out an effective way to provide them. You can’t do that by pushing buttons. Maybe you shouldn’t do that with government policy on a national scale at all. Certainly, in my country public welfare doesn’t work efficiently, and (thank goodness) we have no national welfare programs of any kind. But if you do have a national welfare program, trying to use it to control what the poor eat may make a few elite pundits feel good, but I guarantee it will do virtually nothing to solve the problems of poor people.
— John Spragge · Dec 11, 01:15 AM · #
I think I agree with Chet’s first comment about ag subsidies. Ag subsidies are the root of all evil. They corrupt our political system just as Stalin’s program to kill off the kulaks corrupted the system in the Soviet Union. If we didn’t have ag subsidies, the whole corrupt edifice of the leftwing welfare-police state would come tumbling down. In both the SU and the US the program was to eliminate a bourgeoise middle-class that ought to be a bulwark against the nanny state. In our country we didn’t kill those people off, we just turned them into welfare queens. Not quite as messy as Stalin’s method. I blame our current financial woes on ag subsidies as much as anything, because without them Congress would not have had the votes for the housing subsidies that were the more proximal cause.
And in our country, the current system encourages the production of high-fructose corn syrup on an ungodly scale, producing bad effects on human health and on the environment.
Speaking of corruption, some years ago it was funny to watch how the extreme leftwing congressman who represented our part of Michigan went to bat for the Kellogg Company to get its foods qualified for the WIC program. That kind of story was repeated in many congressional districts. Everyone has his/her own favorite definition of healthy, but what counts is the one that has the most political clout.
— The Reticulator · Dec 11, 02:45 AM · #
he who pays the piper, calls the tune. if we want these people to be healthy citizens, we can decide how our money is spent.
This is Exhibit A in the case against nationalized health care.
Exhibit B is the GM/Chrysler takeover.
— The Reticulator · Dec 11, 05:16 AM · #
Luckily, no one is arguing for “nationalized health care.”
— Freddie · Dec 11, 05:22 AM · #
“Why didn’t I think of that?” As a physician, I sent a letter to Rep Portman years ago during his first term in the House, proposing just such a restriction on purchases, easily done with (then) current computerized checkout technology. I claimed it would achieve three goals: save taxpayer money at the grocery, lower Medicaid costs by decreasing obesity, and preserve cultural, trans-generational cooking skills by only covering staples instead of ready-to-eat. Alas, I never heard back from him. No good ideas come from just run-of-the-mill citizens, afterall….
— shannon · Dec 11, 03:35 PM · #
Luckily, no one is arguing for “nationalized health care.”
OK, maybe I am giving them too much credit by using the word “arguing.” It gives the impression that they are trying to convince people of the need for it, rather than trying to install it by brute force.
— The Reticulator · Dec 11, 05:47 PM · #
Who the hell do you think opposes it? Who the hell was it who made it what it is today. God, you people are ignorant.
You’re just playing with words. Anthony Weiner let it slip. Barack the anointed also said it. They want single payer. What the hell is the difference?
— jd · Dec 12, 12:04 AM · #
The difference, oh idiotic one, is the difference between health insurance and health care.
— Chet · Dec 12, 01:42 AM · #
The difference, oh idiotic one, is the difference between health insurance and health care.
Uh, huh. And what difference would that be, please? Keep in mind the context here, about those who pay the piper getting to call the tune.
— The Reticulator · Dec 12, 10:01 PM · #
Shannon- I regret that you never heard back from your representative. If I could answer you, I would say that:
1) your proposal might well save money.
2) too many factors drive the obesity of poor people for a computer system to handle
3) while I laud your desire to “preserve cultural, trans-generational cooking skills”, and in fact support an organization devoted to improving food security for the poor by helping to do just that, the government cannot accomplish that with a computer program. You cannot preserve cultural and culinary skills without wisdom and compassion, and computers have neither of these qualities.
— John Spragge · Dec 14, 03:15 PM · #
John – WTH are you talking about this computer issue? Maybe I didn’t write clearly enough: computerized checkout at the grocery would make it easier (than, say, in 1969) to make some items ring up ‘covered’ by food stamps, and some items ‘not covered’ by stamps. I.e. staples vs culinary entertainment such as Doritos or diet Coke. That’s all I meant…
— shannon · Dec 14, 09:12 PM · #
Exactly: I consider that a highly inappropriate use of the technology. It gives the people who promulgate the policy and load up the database a highly illusory sense of having done something, while throwing another layer of oppression on the backs of mostly underprivileged and overworked women.
People don’t lose “cultural, trans-generational cooking skills” because they simply choose “culinary entertainment” (an inappropriately dismissive summary of the reasons people choose certain foods in any case). The problems that lead to a loss of these skills range from abuse in families to racism in various manifestations to the simple pressure on workers to move to find work, to the lack of cooking facilities for poor people. Addressing these problems requires wisdom and compassion, neither of which a computerized point of sale terminal can provide. A woman struggling to provide for a young child with IBS and a thirteen year old who will not eat anything outside a narrow range of foods, in a motel room with one hot plate from which she can expect to get evicted if her cooking triggers the smoke alarm will, quite correctly, see a policy, enforced by computer, of coercing her to buy the “approved” foods as abuse. I see it as an abuse of the technology as well.
If you want to deal with problems like the loss of skills, you have to work with the poor. Computers don’t offer a short cut.
— John Spragge · Dec 15, 01:48 AM · #
John-
I beg to differ. Using tax dollars to buy diet Mt Dew IS gustatory entertainment, not a safety net rescuing the poor from malnutrition. (It’s my taxes, so I don’t give a hoot about being “dismissive”.) Lots of these foods cause more harm than good. And yes, necessity IS the mother of invention, and HAVING to do something (cook) instead of popping it in a microwave WILL preserve skills intergenerationally, whether you likes the means or not.
Citing exceptions to the case or hard luck cases smacks of campaign podium rhetoric. You might try contemplating this: “the perfect is enemy to the good.” This, good sir, is a fallen world.
— shannon · Dec 15, 06:42 PM · #
shannon – let’s separate motives here. If you want to save taxpayer money, I recommend getting rid of commodity welfare programs entirely, and going with Milton Friednam’s suggestion of a negative income tax. If you simply want to save taxpayer money within the framework of commod, then, as I have already said, restricting what food stamps can buy will probably accomplish that. Let’s just not confuse that motive with benevolence for the poor.
As for your comment about wanting to “preserve skills intergenerationally”, I consider it utterly naive to imagine that programming a point of sale terminal will magically create a set of cooking utensils in a motel room, or motivate a woman working two jobs to pass on skills she may not have to a teenager with no interest in them. Beyond that, the idea that we can get what we want by loading up a database has implications, in this very much fallen world, that I don’t think you would like at all. Governments that load up databases to control what the poor eat “for their own good” can just as easily load up databases to cut off support for medical treatment to people over a certain age, or to automate medical decision making entirely, or eliminate all government funding for contraception or abortion. Once we get the idea that we can articulate a benevolent purpose and program a computer to do the heavy lifting, our capacity for mischief knows no bounds.
Don’t take my word for it; read the eminent computer scientist Joseph Weizanbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason for more detail. He explains how computers work, their limits, and what we should not attempt to make them do.
As an aside: since most US welfare programs come with a means test, they recipients will, by definition, consist mainly of hard luck cases.
— John Spragge · Dec 16, 12:13 AM · #
John- you seem to have a block here. I am NOT asking a software program to do social work. [I am no techno-dude for sure, and would consign the whole computer system to the dustbin if it were up to me, and go back to pencil ledgers and Bob Cratchit’s.] I only propose that the bloody cash register distinguish between potato chips and POTATOES! If you would oppose that, then you’re as big a Luddite as me. Besides, the welfare programs are already computer-administered. And yeah, I’d also chuck the whole welfare state. But it doesn’t mean we can’t make what we have more efficient. Of course even this effort is now moot, as the gov’t has thrown any semblance of fiscal responsiblity to the wind, with trillion dollar deficits, etc. So our mini-debate here amounts to cerebral m*st*rb*t**n, doesn’t it?
— shannon · Dec 16, 04:33 PM · #
As Donna Harraway puts it, we are cyborgs, like it or not. We depend on technology, like it or not. And therefore, the question of what technology, including computers can or cannot do, matters to us.
You can program a computer to distinguish between potato ships and potatoes. And yes, that may save you some money. And if you want nothing more than to do that, fine. But it matters that you not indulge any illusions that you can expect to foster the intergenerational transmission of cooking skill by doing that, and it matters partly because if we try to depend on computers to do things like that, they won’t get done, and partly because thinking of human tasks as mechanical has a sorry record of leading to mischief.
— John Spragge · Dec 18, 05:07 AM · #
yet, Necessity IS the Mother of Invention, and our lethargic underclass would shortly grow weary of raw potatoes….
— shannon · Dec 18, 03:31 PM · #
I’m not one to say that the government should be in control of people to such an extreme, but recently I was at the grocery store watching a woman with her children purchasing grocery’s with her food stamps. Almost everything she had in her cart contained chips, treats and soda pop. There were a few items that contained some nutritional supplements, but not many. As she was told she didn’t have enough money in her account, I watched her put the nutritious items back while she kept the 6 cases of soda pop and snacks.
I know everyone’s situations are different and not everyone on food stamps would do this, but for those who do, for the sake of their children, maybe there needs to be a few restrictions.
— Scentsy Wickless Candles · Dec 19, 01:00 PM · #