A Personal Experience
I, the editor of the Tin Can Conservative, have personally worked at Dollar General. Dollar General is a discount retailer that primarily caters to low-income and fixed-income consumers. Consequently, a significant amount of Dollar General customers use food stamps (i.e. SNAP) to purchase their groceries.
What I witnessed is that people mainly used food stamps to buy junk food. That’s right; candy, sodas, and potato chips were common kinds of junk food that SNAP users bought at my Dollar General.
As a consequence, my personal experience caused me to learn more about the SNAP program and to question who benefits from this situation. This post is here to diagnosis the situation (not to denigrate poor people). In fact, you’ll find that poor people are being taken advantage. With that, enjoy the post.
What Is SNAP?
In theory, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a government welfare program that’s supposed to help low-income Americans purchase nutritious food. The US Department Agriculture website states that “SNAP provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food and move towards self-sufficiency”. Unfortunately, that statement does not reflect reality. About 1/5 of all SNAP funds were spent on junk-food categories such as “sweetened beverages,” “prepared desserts,” “salty snacks,” “candy,” and “sugar”. Clearly, these food groups have nothing to do with good nutrition. As with most government programs, SNAP may have good intentions, but it causes more than harm to poor Americans.
Now, SNAP (“food stamps”) does impose some restrictions. For instance, SNAP recipients cannot use their funds for alcohol, cigarettes, pet food, and all non-food items. However, SNAP recipients can buy any junk food that’s available. Tobacco and booze are unacceptable, but junk foods that directly cause obesity are “a-okay” to purchase. That logic does not make sense.
What’s the point of taxpayer money going to buying junk food? Aren’t there better ways to help needy Americans? Of course, there are. These questions are pertinent. But our regime has no incentives in solving the problem.
Harming Americans’ Health
The evidence is pretty clear. SNAP directly impairs the health of poor Americans. The American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that food purchases using SNAP benefits were more likely to purchase unhealthy food groups. Similarly, food purchases without SNAP benefits were more likely to go toward wholesome food categories—such as fruits, vegetables, and poultry.
Moreover, the US Department of Agriculture found that SNAP recipients were more likely to be obese than higher-income earners as well other low-income households that did not participate in SNAP.
These findings are highly concerning. It sounds a whole like SNAP is not fulfilling its supposed goal as a government program. You may be wondering what’s the point of SNAP. Who actually benefits? Well, I am glad that you asked that question.
So Who is Benefitting? (Qui Bono)
To wrap up this post, I want to show who actually benefits from SNAP/food stamps: Corporate America. Large Junk-food and Soda companies directly profit off of SNAP and low-income Americans’ poor health.
Billions of taxpayer dollars annually go to junk-food companies in the form of SNAP purchases. That’s a pretty hefty direct subsidy to Big “Sugar” companies: Coca-Cola, Kellogg, PepsiCo, Keurig-Dr. Pepper, Nestle, General Mills, and more.
No wonder Junk-food companies donate millions of dollars to American politicians on both sides of the aisle. Lobbyists for “Big Sugar” and other junk-food companies help ensure that no meaningful reform takes place involving SNAP.
If you don’t believe me, please go do some research about this problem. Just because the “TV Man” doesn’t say anything about this issue doesn’t’ mean that I’m wrong. This unholy Alliance between government and Big Business is detrimental for ordinary Americans.
I know this post was fairly gloomy, but fear not! Understanding the problem is always the first step to fixing it. We should all tell our politicians our tax dollars should no longer subsidize these multi-billion dollar junk food companies.