Starving People With "Healthy Food"

I suspect this motherfucker knows perfectly well that restricting food stamp purchasing to fresh fruits and vegetables and unprocessed meat without increasing the allowance means that that the current $1.40 per meal will not buy enough food to feed a gerbil.

When you have very little money to spend on food, being poor and having to use food stamps, your goal is to get the maximum number of calories for the least amount of money.

That means you buy a lot of starch and empty calories that make you feel full:  potatoes, white bread, rice, noodles and chips.

Also sugary drinks that give you temporary energy to make up for the lack of protein and good carbohydrates that you can't afford because congressional repugs think poor people deserve to starve.

No, it's not healthy.  But it will keep kids from crying from hunger or falling asleep in class because of empty stomachs.

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly:

Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would require people using federal food stamps to buy only healthy food.

The Healthy Food Choices Act, H.R. 3073, reflects a long-standing criticism that the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allows people to buy billions of dollars worth of junk food.

A 2012 study found that food stamps enable about $2 billion worth of junk food purchases each year, and that more than half of all SNAP benefits are used to buy sugary drinks.

Efforts to curb these purchases have been opposed by anti-hunger groups. But Roe said some states are already exploring ways to curb junk food purchases through the SNAP program, and argued that the federal government needs to take steps as well….

Under Roe’s bill, food purchased under SNAP would have to meet the same guidelines that food purchased under the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program already have to meet. The WIC guidelines are strict, and are made up of several different standards for products like breakfast cereal, milk, vegetables, peanut butter and other foods.

I haven’t read Roe’s bill, and don’t know if it does anything to make these “healthy food choices” more available, with, for example, expanded incentives for community food banks and produce markets. But for all the sugary talk from Roe, I suspect the support base for this bill is primarily punitive.

No shit. WIC requirements are stricter because infants and women who are pregnant and nursing have specific nutritional needs. WIC also provides a subsidy sufficient to purchase healthier foods, which SNAP does not.