If the government wants people to not eat food that makes them fat and unhealthy, why is it paying for it through SNAP, or food stamps, for those with low incomes?
It seems like common sense that the government shouldn't subsidize or outright pay for the purchase of sugary soda and candy for those who are enrolled in a nutrition program from what's titled the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
But they are -- subsidize something and get more of it, and sure enough, we are paying for obesity. How many people have thought about this?
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has, and he's is working with Agriculture Secretary Gail Brooks to put a stop to it.
According to Newsweek:
Since being appointed to the Trump administration as head of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this month, Kennedy has made it clear he is in favor of stripping unhealthy foods from SNAP.
"The one place that I would say that we need to really change policy is the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches," Kennedy told Fox News. "There, the federal government in many cases is paying for it. And we shouldn't be subsidizing people to eat poison."
It's just common sense. When people get fat from gorging on unhealthy sugars and carbs on the government dime, their next stop is the free health care system where their health issues that come of it cost the government billions.
But even the government can't fix all of it. Being fat and unhealthy, with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues, and other ailments derived from consumption of sugar, soda, Flamin' Hot Crunchy Cheetos, and other junk leaves the quality of life of those who partake diminished and facing an early death. If there wasn't so much of this going around, we wouldn't notice how many fat people there are now. And among the indigent, the problem is pretty significant.
Recall that when Tom Wolfe wrote "Mau-mauing the Flak-Catchers," about the quest for government welfare programs in the 1960s in San Francisco, he capped it off with this list of junk food as the ultimate prize:
The Dashiki Chief has distributed aong them all the greatest grandest sweetest creamiest runniest and most luscious mess of All-American pop drinks, sweets, and fried food ever brought together in one place. Sixty strong, sixty loud, sixty wild, they come swinging into the great plush gold-and-marble lobby of the San Francisco City Hall with their hot dogs, tacos, Whammies, Frostees, Fudgsicles, french fries, Eskimo Pies, Awful-Awfuls, Sugar-Daddies, Sugar-Mommies, Sugar-Babies, chocolate-covered frozen bananas, malted milks, Yoo-Hoos, berry pies, bubble gums, cotton candy, Space Food sticks, Frescas, Baskin-Robbins boysenberry-cheesecake ice-cream cones, Milky Ways, M&Ms, Tootsie Pops, Slurpees, Drumsticks, jelly dougnuts, taffy apples, buttered Karamel Korn, root-beer floats, Hi-C punches, large Cokes, 7-Ups, Three Musketeer bars, frozen Kook-Aids--with the Dashiki Chief in the vanguard.
All paid for by the government.
Sure, government money isn't the only source of this obesity epidemic, plenty of people eat sugar, chemicals and carbs abundantly on their own. But it is a big one, and it could open the gates to a new system of eating healthily which could at least spare this population as well as spill over into the adjacent populations.
And yes, food deserts in urban areas are a problem, many people who live on junk food in urban areas don't have much choice in what they can buy, but it's not an insurmountable one.
Blue city governments could be forced into making neighborhood groceries that carry fresh and minimally processed foods into tax-free zones if they want federal funding, as well as pay for police to prevent theft which shuts so many of these establishments down.
Media outlets as well as X have been reporting pushback from junk food manufacturers who apparently paid "conservative influencers" to push back against this excellent MAHA idea, which is what we voted for.
It's obnoxious, but now that we know, it's doubtful these paid shills will be so influential.
What's more important is that state legislatures are starting to act, chain-reaction style, to this necessary reform, one after another -- a Google search shows Texas and Missouri looking at this. There also is a federal bill in the works from Rep. Keith Self to ban sugary sodas from purchase with federal benefits. Democrats will no doubt call it "mean-spirited," as in, taking candy from a baby. But it needs to be done if the country is going to head in a healthier direction. It's not mean, it's merciful.
It's also what we voted for. Bobby Kennedy and those aligned with his MAHA movement is quietly continuing to deliver the goods.
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