Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Common-Sense Food Stamps

Republicans chide Democrats for creating a nanny state, one where “government” seeks to shape our lives, abrogating our right to shape our own destinies. So we battle over regulations for seat belts, for blood alcohol limits while driving, for standards for cribs, for fire regulations in buildings – all “nanny” restrictions. The list goes on. For the most part even libertarians have accepted those restrictions because the aftermath of unbelted passengers, inebriated drivers, babies in unsteady cribs, and fire-traps adds to public costs. In short, the rules are commonsense.

In that spirit of commonsense, let’s revisit food stamps.

When the government established the Food Stamp Act in 1964 as part of President Johnson’s Great Society, poor people were hungry and malnourished. The food stamp program, coupled with the food surplus distribution program, sought to raise the caloric intake of impoverished Americans. Admittedly, the programs bolstered the country’s agricultural sector; but the aim was also humanitarian. The government didn’t want so many people to hover so close to starvation.

Fast forward decades. Today’s problem is obesity, which brings a string of consequences, especially diabetes. Simply put, too many Americans (almost 40%) are too plump. The growing popularity of gastric bypass surgery attests to our nation’s growing girth – as do the super-sized airline seat belts. The poor suffer the most: their “body mass indices” rank high, while their income ranks low. A perverse correlation.

Sweetened drinks are popular: food stamp recipients spend roughly 10% of their credits on the drinks, three times more than they spend on milk. (Non-recipients spend roughly 7% of their “food dollars” on the drinks.)

The high-calorie drinks contain no vitamins, minerals, or fiber.

One suggestion: take these soft drinks off the food stamp menu. A suggestion is afloat to do just that.

The naysayers raise their objections:

Restricting purchases raises the nanny state to a new level: we are not only giving people money for food, but telling them what they cannot buy. Soda is not illegal; people without food stamps can buy it. Why not poor people?

Making soda ineligible for food stamps simply shifts the payer: consumers will buy it with their own discretionary dollars.

Exclusions make administering the program harder for supermarkets, which must electronically weed out “non-eligible” soda.

And the definition of “healthy” food is murky. In 1994, when the Food and Drug Administration set standards for calling food “healthy, ” the FDA required that “healthy” foods contain nutrients (like fiber, vitamins, iron), while limiting fat and cholesterol. Today as the government reworks the definition of “healthy,” the standards have changed: the link between cholesterol and heart disease is not so clear; all “fats” are not “bad;” and instead of limiting fats, the FDA should limit sugar. Proponents of vegan, gluten-free, vegetarian, and paleo diets have spoken up. Indeed, manufacturers of bottled water, with no nutrients or calories, have argued to be called “healthy.” In a few more decades, the FDA will doubtless redefine “healthy” again. (In a future evocative of Woody Allen’s Sleeper, some day we may savor healthy hot fudge sundaes.)

Furthermore, obesity has no one bogey: indolence as well as snack foods contributes to munchers’ girth. Munchers who eradicated soda from their diets might still be obese.

All these objections are plausible.

But obesity is a public health menace; and the nanny state – if it is to do its job as nanny — can do more than bemoan the data, or lament the complexity of a solution. One proposal is to give food stamp recipients more credit for buying fruits and vegetables – a “carrot” approach to improving nutrition - tantamount to the bribes nannies (and parents) give children to do what they should do without bribes. That may work, at least so long as the bribes continue.

An easier tack is to “say no” to those sweetened drinks that do not enhance consumers’ nutrition, that predispose them to illness, and that enrich the coffers of the companies that make the drinks. Nannies, and parents, often say “no” – common-sense “nos.” The government pays $70 billion to improve Americans’ nutrition; it should not pay to make us fat.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2018

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