One Missouri state Representative, Rick Brattin, recently drafted a bill that would restrict what food stamp recipients in the state could buy with their SNAP benefits. Besides the fact that imposing new limitations is against Federal law, there are many problems with this.
The specific restrictions the bill would illegally impose include prohibiting the purchase of "cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak." Brattin complains that he has seen people buying products like lobster and fillet mignon with their food stamps, and evidently he takes offense at this. In fact, he takes so much offense at this that he is willing to challenge Federal law by passing an illegal state law to prevent this.
The real problems with this bill are not related to Federal law at all, however. There are health implications as well as a question of discrimination. Besides that, expensive foods that are sometimes regarded as extravagant can easily be part of a very frugal diet.
"Seafood" is a huge category of foods, and nutritionists currently recommend eating at least two servings of fatty fish per week. Many recommend twice that, but since fatty fish are typically the more expensive types (salmon, for example), and many Americans cannot afford to eat it more often than that, they say twice a week is enough for a reasonably healthy diet. This bill would defeat the purpose of the SNAP program. The acronym stands for "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program." If seafood is prohibited, it might as well be renamed SCAP (Supplemental Calorie Assistance Program), because a significant part of the "nutrition" part is being thrown out over whether poor people should be allowed to eat traditional rich person food.
This brings up the next problem. This is very blatant discrimination against the poor. This Representative seems to believe that poor people should not be allowed to eat traditional rich person food. He is acting like some kind of elitist foodie who cannot stand to see the rabble eating his precious steak and lobster. Now, I understand why energy drinks would be prohibited, as they are more like medication than food. Likewise, soft drinks are barely food (let's ban water too). Chips actually provide a decent amount of calories (at a very low cost per calorie), and with the recent discovery that diets high in plant oils are very beneficial, chips can be part of a very healthy diet (in moderation). Prohibiting cookies is absurd, as they typically contain a lot of healthy components, despite their higher than average sugar content. The steak restriction is even more absurd. Yes, people on SNAP probably should not be eating fillet mignon every night for dinner. If they are, then it is the state's fault for giving them far more SNAP money than they need. Real SNAP recipients do not eat steak and lobster dinners on SNAP regularly (because they cannot afford it). If Brattin did not actually see how those buying these products on SNAP used them, then he has no business judging them.
Let me share my personal experience with this matter. My family is on food stamps, and while we have never bought fillet mignon on food stamps, we have bought cheaper steaks and we buy about two lobsters each year. For our New Years dinner, we have also been known to buy a few crab legs. When we do this, we carefully budget our food stamp money so we can afford it. Would Brattin deny us this opportunity to learn good financial skills? (Actually, we are not poor due to poor financial skills. For the most part, we manage our money quite well, but apply this to the many people on food stamps who do benefit from the experience.) The steak is almost never cooked as whole steaks. Once in a while, I make an oriental beef and broccoli dish, which calls for one pound of thinly sliced steak. At $5.99 a pound (and we rarely buy it without a dollar or two discount), with $1 worth of broccoli and maybe $1 worth of rice, all seven of us eat a fairly nice (and healthy) meal at a cost of $8 or less. That comes out to about $1.15 per person. Most Americans spend two to three times that on a meal. Obviously, we could use chicken instead to get it under $1 per person, but would Brattin really be so petty as to deny us quality in our meal for a few cents, even though we already spend far less than the average? Evidently he would.
Now, the lobster is usually for special occasions, like anniversaries. Even we consider it a bit extravagant, which is why it is a once a year thing. Like I mentioned, we carefully budget for this. It seems rather absurd that the state would interfere in our food buying choices, when we are already being so careful not to abuse the system. Now, I recognize that others may choose to abuse the system, but punishing us for it is just plain wrong. Further though, lobster is actually not that expensive. On sale, where we live (Idaho, so not close enough to the ocean to make it seriously cheap), it is $4.00 for a medium sized lobster tail (we don't buy whole; the price is higher while the meat to shell ratio is lower). Not on sale it costs more like $5.99 a tail, though in the winter it sometimes gets up to $7.99. We don't buy it when it is not on sale. Now, we could probably eat lobster once a week without extravagant spending. Consider this: I can make a lobster sauce with one $4 lobster tail that is enough for the whole family (did I mention, we have 5 kids, so that is 7 people). Over rice (about $1 worth; I would actually use pasta, which might come out to $1.50 or $2.00 total), the entire meal could be $5, with maybe another $1.50 for some kind of canned or frozen vegetables. At $6.50 for the whole meal that is 93¢ per person (the flour, milk, and spices used in the sauce are almost negligible in cost). That is a meal with lobster that costs less than $1 per person. With pasta instead of rice, it would come out closer to $1.08 per person. We could eat that every day and not spend all of our SNAP money!
The point here is that even the most expensive foods can be part of a very fugal and healthy meal. Unless Brattin can prove that this is not how those people are using their purchases, then he is totally out of line condemning them for extravagant use of SNAP benefits. Even expensive fillet mignon or crab legs can be integrated into a meal that costs far less than what the typical American spends. In fact, even caviar could be used this way, though I have a hard time believing anyone would actually do this with caviar (I am not going to judge though). Anyhow, judging people based on what foods they are buying is stupid. Instead judge them on how they use the food that they buy, and if you don't know how they are using it, withhold your judgment!
What this really comes down to is freedom. The U.S. is becoming less and less free as time goes by, with the government frequently thinking that it can make our decisions better than we can. If we are not allowed to decide for ourselves, how can the government ever expect us to get better at decision making? The first time some family buys enough steak and lobster on SNAP for every dinner for a week, they will quickly discover that their SNAP benefits won't feed them enough if they spend that way (unless they are doing what I suggested above). Maybe they will start shopping sales. They will probably budget more carefully the next month. Most importantly though, they will learn from their own experience. Maybe they will keep eating a lot of steak and lobster, but they will shop sales and add coupons to that, and if they are willing to do that much extra work to eat steak and lobster frequently, they deserve it just as much as the CEO who does an equal amount of work running his company (seriously, sale shopping and couponing is a lot of work). Some people like bacon gravy for breakfast regularly (a meal that I have heard is often considered a poor man's meal in the south, but which I consider to be gourmet food). It is reasonable to say that the guy who likes bacon gravy is more deserving of eating what he likes than the guy who likes steak and eggs, just because the prices are different? This is an elitist attitude. I don't think Brattin is actually bothered that SNAP recipients are spending some of their benefits on food that is expensive. I think he is bothered that poor people are eating his elitist gourmet food!
(Thankfully, Brattin is the only one actually interested in the bill. He has no co-sponsors, and the state legislature is not actually even considering the bill.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/08/missouri-food-stamps_n_7026704.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment