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

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[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]

Another take is it can all go according to plan until it doesn’t.

This is why I find the sanctimony so grating.

The meager social safety net exists for a reason because some people need help.

But there will always be the bootstraps brigade who think they are sitting on an unmovable and infallible pedestal that they clawed their way onto and will remain on all due to x-factor.

If the sugary foods/drinks and junk snacks were restricted tomorrow, by Friday they’d be on here preaching that the ability to buy red red meat, fish, and chicken should be disallowed as well.

They’d say I don’t want my money subsidizing quality protein for the poors, let them eat rice & beans and canned corn, with chants of my great grands survived on air, rainwater and insect larvae, and the poors can too.

It’s all so transparent and ugly and quite frankly those who preach the loudest are usually the ones that are 2-6 paychecks away from financial devastation themselves. Carrying their whole foods bags, munching on their $18 garbage green kale salads, and driving their leased suburban land yachts.

Overextended, and over leveraged to hell.

The truly wealthy people I know don’t really concern themselves with the spending habits of SNAP recipients.

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