Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Your tax dollars may be keeping people in junk food
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Dan Casey
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The local supermarket checkout clerk who called last week had a point. I won't use her name because if I did her employer would fire her, she said.
Her complaint concerns what people buy with taxpayer-funded food stamps (actually it's a debit card these days). She sees it every day, she said, and she ran down a list:
Cheetos. Soda pop. All manner of sweetened, fried, salted and superprocessed foods.
I interrupted when she got to the lobsters.
"Wait a minute," I said incredulously. "You really see people buying lobsters with food stamps?"
"Well, not at my store -- we don't sell them," she replied. "But you should see the mounds of shrimp and all the crab legs they buy.
"Next time you go to the grocery store, watch," she said. "Because 90 percent of the items they buy have no nutritional value."
That 90 percent zilch-nutrition figure sounds too high -- but it might be about average for all grocery shoppers.
Have you looked at all the highly processed non-nutritional junk crammed onto supermarket shelves these days? It takes up most of every aisle.
If this indeed is a problem, it is growing, because the use of food stamps reached a dubious zenith in November.
At that point, The New York Times reported, the program was feeding one in eight people in this country, including one in four children. In 2008, the cost surpassed $35 billion annually. In Roanoke, one in five people, and two out of every five children, are fed by food stamps.
Certainly some of this money gets spent on meat, dairy products, fruit, vegetables and grains.
But with food stamps, you can also buy pretty much anything you can eat or drink except hot prepared foods or alcohol.
Susan Akers, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, noted in an e-mail that nutrition education for food stamp recipients is an emphasis of the agency's program.
At the same time, she noted, "there are no clear standards for defining foods as good or bad or healthy or not healthy."
The clerk continued ragging on the recipients.
"Their kids are obese. They're heading for diabetes. Their teeth are rotting with cavities from all the junk they're buying with food stamps you and I pay for."
Probably she was exaggerating to make her point. Surely there are kids that fit that bill, both on food stamps and not.
"OK, let's say you're right," I told her. "What's the answer?"
Because you can't cut off those food stamp recipients. Not with all the wealth this nation still has. If you do, 36 million or so people will get hungry. Some will riot.
Besides, taste is a very individual thing. If you prohibit folks from buying shrimp with food stamps, should you ban steak, too? Should people on food stamps be forced to make do with hamburger and chicken thighs?
This caller was no Marie Antoinette. Surprisingly, she more or less agreed. She understands hunger, and she doesn't want to see anyone starve.
But she had an answer:
Limit food-stamp purchases to relatively narrow categories of nutrient-rich groceries allowed to people on the federal Women, Infants and Children program. Those include milk, cheese, eggs, beans, vegetables, peanut butter, bread and the like. Maybe include meat and seafood, too.
Akers argued that idea is impractical because it would be too costly. Enforcement would require an even more bloated bureaucracy.
But the grocery clerk's idea isn't necessarily a bad one.
Nobody on food stamps would go hungry.
Folks already making wise choices would feel little impact.
It would affect only people spending their taxpayer handouts on unhealthy junk.
Let them eat Fritos and drink Coke -- but on their own dime.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
