You do realize 8 billion usd are spent on soda via snap every year right? We have a sick twisted corporate oligarchy with its fingers in the food supply pushing cheap junk food on everyone. Everyone knows Whole Foods cost more than processed food, but an astronomical amount of SNAP is spent on food that should simply not be funded. Beans and rice and bread are far cheaper than any junk food you can find, and when people are being brainwashed by big food corporations there needs to be an external incentive (no SNAP funding) that pushed people away from junk food.
Honestly, I wish there’s was a 50% sin tax on all food above a certain calories/gram or processed or whatever criteria you want that would be reinvested into subsidies for healthy food on SNAP. But that would never happen because Wall Street makes too much money off of fat Americans.
Honestly, I wish there’s was a 50% sin tax on all food above a certain calories/gram or processed or whatever criteria you want that would be reinvested into subsidies for healthy food on SNAP. But that would never happen because Wall Street makes too much money off of fat Americans.
Good intentions here, but the LAST thing we need is an increase on consumer basics like this. Cheap candy bars and sodas are one of the few pleasures that are still affordable for people, despite their unhealthy effects. I’d prefer subsidies to healthy food vs. yet another cost increase.
If we could snap our fingers and make healthy food cheaper, this plan might be fine. But if you don’t do that, this idea just ends up making calories more expensive for poor people. Perhaps it could work okay if people also got more money’s-worth of food stamps, but even then there are food deserts where people just don’t have groceries within a reasonable distance.
I don’t see a future where politicians are willing to spend more money helping people, so if that’s the case then letting people continue to use SNAP on junk food is necessary.
You do realize 8 billion usd are spent on soda via snap every year right? We have a sick twisted corporate oligarchy with its fingers in the food supply pushing cheap junk food on everyone. Everyone knows Whole Foods cost more than processed food, but an astronomical amount of SNAP is spent on food that should simply not be funded. Beans and rice and bread are far cheaper than any junk food you can find, and when people are being brainwashed by big food corporations there needs to be an external incentive (no SNAP funding) that pushed people away from junk food.
Honestly, I wish there’s was a 50% sin tax on all food above a certain calories/gram or processed or whatever criteria you want that would be reinvested into subsidies for healthy food on SNAP. But that would never happen because Wall Street makes too much money off of fat Americans.
A good discussion is here on the “8 billion usd for soda” figure.
TL;DR: it uses data from 2011 from one store, and the media got the number wrong after extrapolating it to all food stamps expenditure.
Good intentions here, but the LAST thing we need is an increase on consumer basics like this. Cheap candy bars and sodas are one of the few pleasures that are still affordable for people, despite their unhealthy effects. I’d prefer subsidies to healthy food vs. yet another cost increase.
If we could snap our fingers and make healthy food cheaper, this plan might be fine. But if you don’t do that, this idea just ends up making calories more expensive for poor people. Perhaps it could work okay if people also got more money’s-worth of food stamps, but even then there are food deserts where people just don’t have groceries within a reasonable distance.
I don’t see a future where politicians are willing to spend more money helping people, so if that’s the case then letting people continue to use SNAP on junk food is necessary.