What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store?
The answer was largely a mystery until now. The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74 billion food stamp program called SNAP, has published a detailed report that provides a glimpse into the shopping cart of the typical household that receives food stamps.
The findings show that the No. 1 purchases by SNAP households are soft drinks, which accounted for about 10 percent of the dollars they spent on food. “In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “It’s pretty shocking.”
For years, dozens of cities, states and medical groups have urged changes to SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to help improve nutrition among the 43 million poorest Americans who receive food stamps. Specifically, they have called for restrictions so that food stamps cannot be used to buy junk food or sugary soft drinks.
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We’ve been subsidizing the beeties!
ht/ MS
Sugar laden sodas, sugar laden cereals, frozen breakfast stuff, sugar laden juices (the mexican ones that are like 1 dollar per 2 gallons) and poptarts. Usually, the kids are sporting iphones and ipods and some sort of electronic devices.
Which annoys me further because I gave up my iphone and snack foods 3 months ago because it was either that or my insulin + a new pump and I don’t have gubmint assistance.
But whatever.
I have yet to see someone who paid with an EBT account with
flour, yeast, vegetables and fruit in their carts. No matter what race or sex they are.
Should only be allowed to purchase basic foods…….Milk, bread, juice, beans, rice…….and lobster.
The USDA spent money to come up with a report that said what we already knew?
Anyone who has walked around the grocery store has seen the piles of junk food in the carts which invariably are being pushed by overweight shoppers, many dragging around little crying copies of themselves. Not long after that, there they are at checkout, paying with food stamps.
“Your taxes at work.”
Anon is me…..
Maybe this is governments way of eliminating people on food stamps. Allow them to buy crap food and die an early death. Legalized genocide.
Ahhh yes, 40 oz “soft drinks”. And muzz store owners sell lottery tix and booze on EBT purchases, but ring it up as “soft drinks”. How stupid do they think we are?
Wait, you mean I won’t see women with 5 kids loading multiple 24 can packs of soda they bought with EBT’s into the back of their $50,000 SUVs anymore?
And don’t think I don’t see you at the cashier cages and the atm in the casinos, withdrawing money from your other welfare accounts to gamble with.
The Katrina hurricane brought a bunch of those people to Las Vegas casinos.
The smart ones have clients who order from the snappers, lobster, steak, veal cutlets etc. for cold cash. It’s a well intentioned program that is being abused. That is what needs to be controlled.
You want a welfare check? take a piss test. Same with EBT cards.
Every three months take a “witnessed” piss test. Because there is another racket: clean urine samples are sold on the street. The mind boggles.
Drain the soda bottles.
I just received the Census Bureau American Community Survey in the mail today , which is supposedly mandatory. This put me in a foul mood and cast a pall over a pretty good day. This is gov intrusion gone wild.
How many rooms in my home? How much acreage? Do I have hot & cold running water? Refrigerator, stove? Desktop, laptop, tablet, cell phone? It only gave me two choices for gender. Which is it fuckheads? Be consistent. If I can self assign a fluid gender based on situational opportunities why just male or female on your form? How much money do I make? Go asked John Koskinen at IRS. He’s already a tapeworm up my ass who hates me. He’s got the numbers. Y’all can kindly go fuck yourselves. I don’t voluntarily give personal information to my enemy. That would be stupid.
Sorry Fur. That was a bit of a thread jack but it’s all under the category of rogue government, rewarding some and casing the joints of others to confiscate the property of others. Grrr.
They buy soda with EBT because they resell the soda for cash.
When I was younger I worked in a grocery store. Only staple foods could be bought with food stamps, and soda wasn’t one of them.
Do away with electronic EBT ‘credit cards’ and bring back paper food stamps. That would cut down on fraud because stores had to turn them in to be reimbursed.
“Among non-SNAP households, for example, soft drinks ranked second on the list of food purchases, behind milk.”
NON SNPAS buy milk.
20 years ago a conservative friend suggested what he called the ‘Oprah Diet’. He said, if you want to be on the government dole then fine, we’ll give you junk food, cable TV, a place to live. Nothing particularly nice, but your basic needs. But you can’t procreate while you’re on the program. It may not be cheap, but probably cheaper than trying to make something out of the losers who would want to do it. Just a thought.
“… its’ pretty shocking”
NO! you know what’s ‘pretty shocking’? .. that the US taxpayers are being raped by idiots-in-charge that believe this outcome is ‘pretty shocking’!!! … anyone w/ an IQ over ‘democrat’ would know this
,,, & I hope it’s real phucking ‘shocking’ when dumb-asses like this clown are summarily marched back into the real world & have to find a real job … phuckin’ putz
Infuriating to see fraudsters with loaded carts fulla stuff I cannot afford or would never consume. Uh, yeah. And that leaving in a 50 grand SUV? That pisses me off too. What’s most infuriating is driving by the Social Security office and seeing parking lot fulla beggars who have more expensive cars than I do.
They restrict WICK (I think that’s what it is; for mothers and children) purchases! I’m so tired of free for all welfare. I hope President Trunp brings back look for work policy.
I see these quivering piles of mealy
white pasty flesh sub-humans with the
cheapest white empty non-nutritional
bread and a couple of plastic gallon
jugs of orange dyed high fructose sugar water
at the Krogers all the time.
if they ordered their food online, the feds would figure out a way to pay for their internet.
(but dont give them any ideas)
We are almost 50% on welfare here. Last year
it was about 46% EITC payment returns. They
have it down to a science. The grandparents
adopt their grand children and go on full EBT
welfare and WIC while the kids live with their
parents.
Welcome to Guam.
Since the ‘Affordable Care Act,” it doesn’t even matter if they have an EBT card… You push your little grocery cart full of zucchini and salmon and wait in line behind the fat folks with a cart full of junk food ahead of you in the checkout line and know that you are rated the same as them for your health insurance premiums. And the DNC wonders why we believe the headlines we read in the National Enquirer while we wait in that line…
They will stop monitoring what they “purchase” with those cards so there is no hard evidence of this insanity.
I was behind an extremely obese woman in the checkout line at the grocery store last Saturday. I couldn’t believe how much crap she had on the grocery belt, and how many cheese puffs etc. and at least 7-8 large cans of Nesquick hot cocoa as well. Geez, it’s no wonder she was a buffarilla. I buy groceries weekly and I don’t buy that much food in a whole month, I am not cheap but I am frugal and do most of my own cooking, I buy good food and not a whole lotta junk. I was on food stamps 6 years ago because 2011 was a lousy year at work and I didn’t buy junk and I always felt stigmatized every time I got groceries (I’m old school with a conscience), I’m glad things got better because it was a very hard year and I can pay for my own food.
End this program and do not give these people the choice of buying HFCS-laden sodas, or cheese puffs, or potato chips, w taxpayer $$. Most of them have a demonstrated horrible track record in making choices, why reward them and allow them to continue to make bad choices? Give them some government bread, government cheese, government meats, government peanut butter, and government fruits and veggies from the government food truck every week.
Gosh. Even when they empty the bottles around the back to cash in the nickels?