There are dozens of other additives that amount to some altered form of sweetener ... polysaccharides, gums of many varieties, modified food starch to name a few. They alter gut bacteria. We weren't meant to eat this stuff.

Maybe it isn't even about the money.

since it is assumed that women do most of the grocery shopping. And we KNOW women cannot make intelligent decisions on their own.

So someone like this nice Epstein associated lady (who was not raised religious, but swayed by pseudoscientific bilge like Intelligent Design) worked on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Picard

She wanted to “rehabilitate” Epstein. She is a creepy person like all of the MIT Media Lab.

seems to exceed what it would cost to just give snap to anyone who applies.

......"create confusion". Call me a reactionary, but there is nothing wrong with the public buying good food for the poor, instead of "All-American" junk food.

Why should we do so with SNAP? Or is it because snap benefits “the poors”?

I survived on food stamps as a kid, I know it was humiliating enough for my mom to pay with food stamps. To not even be able to buy your kid a birthday cake is just too much.

... and bad food is better than no food.

Food desserts are a real thing. Many families on SNAP live in areas they cannot access healthy foods without access to transportation they may not be able to afford and at a significant time premium.

If all the foods they have access too are banned by the regulations, then effectively they get no benefit from SNAP. If regulatory changes put significant enforcement burdens on local stores, they may stop accepting SNAP - again to the detriment of those that most need the help.

I'm sure there are people gaming the system. There always have been. But I would rather support 10 frauds that starve one kid.

Is it better if people eat well -- making good food choices. Absolutely. But I went hungry as a kid. I don't want that happening to others.

But bad food is better than no food.

The wealthy and powerful can dictate what we eat, while McDonalds hamburgers are served in the White House.

I receive a small stipend of SNAP each month as a retired OM that I use to buy chicken, hamburger and staple to last through the month. IME.

is as affordable as many junk foods. Until then, they sound little more like sanctimonious attempts to tell others how to better live their lives than rational, thought-out positions. As long as luxury jets with bedrooms for officials are so common, I'll look at cutting costs there rather than scrutinizing the dining tables of people whose circumstances I don’t know.

Too many of the posts on this thread?

Now explain how my remarks about agriculture are the reason "we" lose elections, if you could please.

Just a guess, though.

That is ridiculous. You are judging food as though it were widgets. Yes, luxury widgets will always be more expensive than junk widgets.

Food is free. I live and work in a fruit district and there are thousands of "feral" fruit trees here producing fruit every year, free for the taking. Go get it. You pay for food in order to support the people tending and harvesting, cleaning and packing, storing and shipping the produce to you. You are paying for convenience as well as for your health and safety.

I have been lucky, eating fresh fruit off the tree every day in the season. We have a policy here - no one goes hungry in this county so long as we are farming. But many people do not have access to fresh healthy food. Most poor people make very intelligent food decisions. We have to. (I say "we" because you don't make much money working on the farm). Poor people make much better dollar to calorie ratio decisions than well-off people do.

As I have often said...

Never before in the existence of humankind has there ever been a population as ignorant about and alienated from the source of their own food as modern Americans.

Yep, that's what I said.

Thanks for the comic relief.

Hope the font choice makes up for it!

I don’t see many fruit trees in the five boroughs of NYC.

Many people do not have easy access to food, hence, the need for programs of assistance.

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself belongs to no one!'"

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is a long history of the struggle for commoners to have access to the resources of the land, with the upper class denying that to them. Wave after wave of working class people have been driven off of the land. That is the historical and political background for government food assistance programs, which include the Land Grant college system, the USDA, Cooperative Extension, state ag departments, etc. All of those programs benefit the general public, not just particular recipients, such as the SNAP program participants.

In my opinion, Democrats should never be punching down. Pontificating about how those with the least power and resources should or should not be behaving, and calling for restrictions and qualifications is punching down.

The Enclosure Acts drove people off of the land in the UK, which created a desperate and easily exploitable labor force for the lords of industry and caused massive waves of emigration.That background is important for understanding urbanization, the Industrial Revolution and food security issues.

The Enclosure Acts

Common land is owned collectively by a number of persons or by one person with others holding certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, collect firewood, or cut turf for fuel. A person who has a right in or over common land jointly with others is called a commoner.

Most of the medieval common land of England was lost due to enclosure. In English social and economic history, enclosure was the process that ended traditional rights on common land formerly held in the open field system. Once enclosed, these land uses were restricted to the owner, and the land ceased to be for the use of commoners.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-enclosure-act/

Enclosure and the German Peasant Revolt

The demands of the poor and downtrodden in both urban and rural areas brought together calls for religious reform and economic liberation. Historians have access to hundreds of different examples of the demands raised by the rebellious peasants and townsfolk.

The Twelve Articles produced in March 1525 are the most famous example. This manifesto was quickly distributed and reproduced throughout Germany via the latest communications technology, the printing press. The Twelve Articles offer a fascinating insight into the thoughts of a mass movement that was developing its radical ideas and challenging the status quo.

The articles continued with economic demands, including the abolition of serfdom: “We hereby declare that we are free and want to remain free.” The rebels challenged the way that rich landowners had privatized the land by taking away the rights of ordinary people to hunt, fish, or use resources. One section called for forests to be “returned to the village so that anybody can satisfy his needs therefrom for timber and firewood,” along with former common lands that have been taken away from villagers to enrich the lords.

https://jacobin.com/2023/12/german-peasants-war-feudalism-class-conflict-reformation

"What is the evil brew from which all usury, theft, and robbery springs but the assumption of our lords and princes that all creatures are their property? The fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the face of the earth — it all has to belong to them! To add insult to injury, they have God’s commandment proclaimed to the poor: God has commanded that you should not steal. But it avails them nothing. For while they do violence to everyone, flay and fleece the poor farm worker, tradesman, and everything that breathes, yet should any of the latter commit the pettiest crime, he must hang . . . It is the lords themselves who make the poor man their enemy. If they refuse to do away with the causes of insurrection how can trouble be avoided in the long run? If saying that makes me an inciter to insurrection, so be it!"

- Thomas Münzter

https://www.culturematters.org.uk/thomas-muntzer-and-the-german-peasants-war/

This historical background is important for Democrats to understand, because it still strongly influences politics today, if we don't address this dynamic a vacuum is created into which right wing demagogues can operate.

"The poacher is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time—when for hunting purposes all land was held in common. In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern society."

- Edward Carpenter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Carpenter

"The enclosure of the biological and intellectual commons in this way is a real threat to the future of people everywhere because it creates a situation where common practices that have been part of people's lives for generations become monopolies of a handful of pharmaceutical, agribusiness and agrichemical corporations. People then become incapable of looking after their own needs."

"In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people.'

- Vandana Shiva

in food deserts.

They're free to buy all kinds of macaroni and cheese etc and any kind of other processed crap they want, just not sugary drinks and candy

and those that have been proposed over the years. Like the ones proposed in WI several yyears ago, forbidding real cheese (in WI), dried beans, rice, etc.

Disdain and sanctimonious judgement are just oozing from your posts on this subject.

See post 15.

I agree with that.
Our mileage May differ on who's doing it though
All I saw on the blurb is they were not alowing candy and soda.

everything I said.

mac and cheese will fill you up much faster than a fucking salad

over and OUT

I'd say an increase of an minimum of 200 a month per child for produce would probably help a lot.

Or maybe they hold down two jobs and simply can't be home to cook. Or they may simply be homeless.

Just not sugary drinks and candy

We don't "trust" them to buy the food WE deem OK to eat?

What can we do to help them eat better foods? Offer them fresh, better foods! Make it easy to get them.

I think subsidizing diabetes may be a bad idea, ymmv

Health care professionals are the people who can help here.

$298/month gets a person who lives in NYC?

There's lots of cheap unhealthy foods they can still buy

Are they also on Medicaid so we pick up their doctor bills too?
diabetes graph

We don't get to pick the ones whose life and eating styles agree with our standards. People who drink too much, or who are injured due to their own drunk driving or whose bodies have been ravaged by a lifetime of eating unhealthy foods.

an option. Consider, however, what might be that recipient's options. Are there healthier ones in the first place? It is entirely possible that there aren't. Are there any Whole Foods stores available to them? Could they afford that option? Do they have kitchens with refrigerators?

Even Mac and cheese requires boiling water.

because they consume it sometimes? Most people do. But that doesn’t mean they eat it three times a day instead of regular meals.

SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Notice it doesn't say supplemental malnutrition.

And no one's stopping them from buying soda and candy with their own money,
Just probably not a good idea for the government to underwrite diabetes.

Or maybe they simply don't have ready access to those foods.

In fact meal delivery plan as an option could be a way for the government to keep costs reasonable while providing healthy and nutritional meals to people.

I'll just put that there.

these are "red states" going back at least three presidential elections. Simpleton magas would probably least expect this much pushback from ordinarily "safe zones."

That's why it was in quotes.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Just say it, whatever it is.

is that poor people are undeserving. New restrictions, but an old tradition.

This is another issue that Democrats used to support but are now against. I guess we'll just keep driving the cost of healthcare up.

about people's health?

That doesn't mean Democrats have to want people to get diabetes just to be on the other side.

coul address some of the other, more immediate, issues being discussed in this thread?

I don't take RFK seriously, but that doesn't mean I think SNAP should be providing diabetes to poor people. I feel like we have the need to be against everything Trump is for even if we agree with him. Up until recently, it was the libertarian position that government should have no say in how SNAP is spent, now it's us.

I've seen threads where some Democrats sound like free market capitalists opposing tariffs and other protectionist policies... things Democrats used to support. We don't have to turn against are own policy positions just because Trump agrees with us.

virtue signalling that seems to surround every discussion about "healthy eating" and "junk food restrictions", wherever they occur, I would like people to keep in mind one little fact. Many people live in the "food deserts", meaning there are no grocery stores within ten miles. The ONLY access to any kind of food in those areas is convenience stores, with their limited choices. And before I hear anything about "just get on a bus", as one pontificator snarled at me several years ago in a meeting, many of those same areas do not have decent public transit, either. And, even if there is, hauling bags of groceries on and off buses, particularly if one has to transfer, or has mobility isssues, is not a picnic.

When one defends all these restrictions, whatever one's stated reason, one must ask oneself why it is okay to tell these people what they may, or may not, purchase with OUR money. Does one tell the military how to spend the trillions they get? Does one restrict the oil companies? Big AG? Big Pharma? And then think about what those answers say about oneself.

Should beer be allowed? How about household items? Or would those be the cutoff in your opinion? For the record, I am all for allowing sweets to be purchased with SNAP.

qualify as "nutrition". Allowing any kind of alcohol is, in all likelihood, never going to happen.

The other poster thinks it all should be covered. Post 79.

FFS.

What is the matter with people here?

SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It was created for things that can be ingested, with the exception of liquor and vitamins. Allowing household supplies won't happen, unless you enjoy Tide Pods with your coffee.

It is truly abhorrent that shaming and misogyny masquerade as concern for people with limited means.

I am all for SNAP covering sweets/soda, but liquor and household supplies? Come on. We have cash assistance for that.

Why control what people buy at all? That is a right wing approach.

SNAP is for consumption that isn't alcohol or vitamins.

Being a Democrat is not for scolding and lecturing those who are less fortunate. It is not for punching down.

You can buy liquor, clothes, detergent or cigarettes with cash assistance. SNAP is for Supplemental Nutrition.

PeaceWave agreed with me. He deleted his post after I told him that's what cash assistance is for. You're alone with thinking SNAP should cover it all.

I doubt it, though. Say I am. So what?

What is the difference between these two scenarios:

1) A young single mother uses SNAP benefits to buy her child a $10 birthday present, and then spends $10 cash here at our fruit stand.

2) The same young single mother uses SNAP benefits to buy $10 worth of fruit here at our fruit stand, and then spends $10 cash to buy her child a birthday present.

I'm all for the young single mother getting cash assistance from the government, in addition to SNAP benefits.

Unless you want to combine the two, while bringing up the payments? That conceivably could work.

It was created - as so many programs are - as a shabby compromise. The shame, barriers, conditions and control elements that the Republicans love - especially when used against women and minority populations - get added to any benefits.

SNAP was created for consumption only. We have cash assistance for non-foods.

Last edited Tue Mar 17, 2026, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Almost everything that has come out of Congress over the last 30 years involves some degree of compromise with the Republicans. That is what isn't up for agreeing or disagreeing.

Here's a bit of history, since you won't research on your own. The modern program became permanent with the Food Stamp Act of 1964, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of the Great Society and War on Poverty efforts.

SNAP can only be used for eligible food items intended for home consumption—such as fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, breads, cereals, and non-alcoholic beverages. Items like detergent, clothes, soap, cleaning supplies, paper products, pet food, vitamins, alcohol, tobacco, and hot prepared foods are ineligible.

Over decades, SNAP has evolved (e.g., removing the purchase requirement in 1977 and renaming to emphasize nutrition in 2008), but its foundational intent remains unchanged: targeted support for better diets and agricultural stability, not broad household goods.

It seems you need to take it up with LBJ, not me. He also had Democratic supermajorities in Congress.

"Here's a bit of history, since you won't research on your own. "

I am quite familiar with the history.

"SNAP can only be used for..."

I never said anything to the contrary.

You haven't addressed my points. I am not talking about what it is, but rather what it should be. I think that is clear. A little late to take it up with LBJ. I am taking it up with you. I said the same things then that I am saying now.

Sometimes text can come across that was, but I did not intent too.

I understand about text coming across harsher than intended and the danger of imagine intent that wasn't there. No problem. My bad.

I favor more support for the ag infrastructure and a much broader program of assistance.

that recipients be allowed to purchase hot prepared food. I can see no reason why that is not permitted. There are ‘many people who are unable to cook. In NY state, SNAP recipients who are 60 and over can use their EBT card to purchase meals at restaurants. They even get a 10% discount if they do so. So, why should SNAP recipients be forbidden from purchasing hot prepared foods? It doesn’t make any sense.

It makes no sense to me that hot prepared food isn't allowed. I'm on the fence about restaurants though. Do you think it would be a good idea for all, even those under 60?

What part of Supplemental Nutrition don't you understand? Even Bernie wouldn't agree with that position.

What part of right wing talking points don't you understand? We've seen where the
"normal approach" in politics has gotten us. If what you say about Sanders is true, then he is wrong.

What I do understand about Supplemental Nutrition is that it is a response to the fact that millions of people in the country struggle to have access to adequate nutrition. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The notion that we need to force the most vulnerable among us to get adequate nutrition obvious says that their lack of access to adequate nutrition is their fault. That position is ignorant and it is cruel.

Of course on the farm we would rather that people come here rather tha to the junk food aisle - or any aisle - in the supermarket. And overwhelmingly, they already do. I rarely see SNAP recipients in the local store, but I see them in the farm market all the time. Why is that? Because people who are poor make much better decisions than those with significant discretionary income do. We have no choice. The premise used to justify restriction on the use of the (absurdly picayune) SNAP benefits, as often expressed by Republican politicians, is that people who are in poverty are not very smart and don't make good decisions.

Googling just now I find dozens (hundreds?) of right wing sites - "why do poor people make bad decisions?" Oh, is that what's wrong with the country? Poor people making bad decisions? What, unlike the wealthy?

From the NIH:

"Dietary food choice based on price per calorie best matches actual consumption patterns and may therefore be the most salient price metric for low-income populations."

People with limited means are maximizing their dollar to calorie ratio, something better off people do not need to do. Does that result in crappier food often? Yes, of course. But that is not because people are making bad choices, it is result of business decisions over which the consumers have little or no control.

"Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of America. I'll show you something to make you change your mind." Amazing that I need to argue for compassion here.

I keep glancing up to the top of the page. This IS Democratic Underground, isn't it?

Last edited Mon Mar 16, 2026, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)

Stop making it about talking points. Read what SNAP stands for. You're not buying detergent with it anywhere.