In the name of improving public health, the government should set up a multi-state demonstration project that bans poor people from using food stamps to buy soda and other sweetened beverages that are blamed for contributing to the obesity epidemic, said an American Enterprise Institute official. “Public health officials have determined that sweetened beverages have no nutritional value…Yet almost 10 percent of food and beverage spending among (food stamp) households is on these products,” said AEI research fellow Angela Rachidi, who was part of a New York City proposal in 2011 for a ban.
A trial “involving a few states” would go far in resolving questions about the real-world impact of such restrictions, said Rachidi. Other witnesses at the House Agriculture Committee hearing said a ban would be difficult to implement and probably would have little impact. Food-stamp benefits are modest, averaging $4.50 a day per person, and recipients typically use some of their own cash at the grocery store, said Diane Schanzenbach of the Brookings Institution.
Committee chairman Michael Conaway said, “[B]illions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on items like sweetened beverages and prepared desserts,” so it was appropriate to “consider whether additional restrictions should be added” to food stamps to prod people toward healthier diets.
“We could all use some guidance,” responded Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat. “I’m not sure the government is the way to provide it.” Nor, he said, do grocers want to be the “food police.”
The USDA says the diets of Americans are similar whether they receive food stamps, formally named the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or not. In a 2016 report, USDA said 40 cents of each food-stamp dollar was spent on “basic items,” such as meat, fruit, vegetables, bread and milk. Around 20 cents were spent on sugary and salty snacks, sugar, candy and sweetened beverages, and the remaining 40 cents went to things like cereal, rice, beans, prepared foods and dairy products.
“Congress has stated that the purpose of SNAP is to support nutrition among low-income households, which is directly contradicted by allowing sweetened beverages to be purchased,” said Rachidi. “A demonstration project involving a few states could greatly expand our knowledge of what works in combating sweetened beverage consumption and the obesity crisis.”
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends people limit added sugars — sweeteners added during processing or cooking food — to 10 percent of daily calories.
“A more constructive and effective path” toward better nutrition, said Schanzenbach, would be incentives to food-stamp recipients to buy healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables.” John Weidman of The Food Trust, a nonprofit group in Pennsylvania, said SNAP incentives were part of a successful program to improve nutrition among low-income Americans.
Conaway took no stand on Rachidi’s proposal to test a soda ban, saying the hearing provided a “productive conversation” that was “another addition to our committee’s commitment to strengthen SNAP.” Early this month, he told Politico that “my intuition would be, yes,” that the Trump administration would be more likely than Obama officials to approve state-level bans on soda or junk-food purchases. “The more we devolve stuff back to the states, that would be the overall push,” he said.
To read the statements of the five witnesses and the opening statement of the chairman, or to watch a video of the hearing, click here.