Reply to study shows how 42M recipients spend their food stamps

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "study shows how 42M recipients spend their food stamps "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are other National food programs like WIC where pregnant and lactating women and children up to 5 get healthy food. There are certain categories like juice, milk, bread, peanut butter/beans,  fruits/vegetables that participants can buy so much of each category. You can’t use WIC to buy soda, candy, cookies or processed food.

Then there is free school lunch and in many communities free school breakfast and for kids who stay after school even free school dinner.

To get an accurate picture of the diet of people using snap you have to add all the nutritional programs  together.  And if you live in cities like Flint, Michigan you are going to be too afraid to have your family drink tap water. There are way too many places in the US where the tap water is not safe to drink. [/quote]

Good points.

Here's more. 
I have a longtime acquaintance who gets SNAP not because she has children, but because of chronic severe mental illness. Long ago she was brilliant and accomplished, but for more than two decades she has been in and out of psych hospitals (anywhere from a few weeks to several months), 2 years of ECT, lives on a small SSDI check supplemented by SSI in a dreary public housing apartment (closets consist of painted cinderblock partitions with low-grade untrimmed plywood shelves, pretty much like the prison camp in Orange is the New Black). Most of the time she lives on the fringe of psychosis. Because of her dual diagnosis alcohol use disorder, she is breathalyzed 2x a day when paid community mental health workers bring her meds. When she goes to the store she gets a ton of Mountain Dew and Coke, ice cream, and yogurt and some frozen meals and Tuna Helper. When she does cook the Tuna Helper, it's a big deal to her and she'll call and invite me to dinner. Soda is her substitute for booze.

So, think of the millions of people on disability and SSI. People with intellectual disabilities and chronic severe mental illness. The soda is bad for them. The other processed foods just as bad, maybe worse. Cooking skills or capacity may be beyond them. BTW smoking is very prevalent among people with certain mental illnesses (especially schizophrenia).

We could create an Eden of community supports to support healthy living for this population (the life expectancy of someone with schizophrenia is in the neighborhood of 50 years, not because of the schizophrenia but because of poor health habits; many are obese and chain smoke). Not likely to happen.

Now, as to the lobbies:
https://www.pogo.org/investigations/the-snack-food-and-corn-syrup-lobbyist-shaping-trumps-dietary-guidelines-for-americans

This article left out one lobbyist segment--sugar producers, both cane and beet. [/quote]

sounds like she should be living in an apartment complex with a cafeteria.  It would be a special one for people in her condition.  Because definitely better to pay for an army of social workers than have an "institution" like this.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics