I suspect that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) exists in large part as an "assistance program" for the junk food suppliers, giving them a captured market upon which to dump their unhealthy wares.
I'd say that if we are giving our money to help others, it isn't unreasonable to have some determination on where it goes.
This is the description I found for SNAP:
"Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal government program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income persons to help them maintain adequate nutrition and health".
Assuming that's accurate, I'd focus on the "nutrition and health" part. If the money is being used on junk that will inevitably lead to more public money having to be provided for the consequences, then I don't have a problem with it.
A case could be made that if left unchecked, are we not the metaphoric enablers of addicts? I wouldn't want to see my tax money given to an alcoholic to buy booze. So, is it really wrong to not want tax dollars to feed junk food addictions?
Good points, but, do you think it's appropriate to punish the addict and not the pusher?
I wish everyone would eat healthier and I wish everyone would question vaccines, and I wish everyone would quit smoking, drinking, doing harmful drugs, having unprotected sex, and I wish everyone would get up and move....I also wish we could have more control over our tax money and quit spending it on war. A lot of communities give clean needles to addicts. They left liquor stores open during covid so alkies wouldn't go through withdrawals.
What I am saying, is that I don't trust the federal government to make choices for me (I don't get food benefits) and people who do receive food benefits exist in an already completely formed society. The PTB would not force addicts to go cold turkey and they don't force alkies to go cold turkey AND they still sell cigarettes.
"I should fund...", Egoist. How about he doubling food stamps instead of throwing people off. I have a friend who lost food stamps because 6-Flags closed their theme park during the holidays due to storm related damage. You can work with Food-Stamps but can't have Food-Stamps if you don't work, apparently. Seems more fuedalism than democracy. Government Subsidizing the Basic Nutrition Needs of Private Wage-Slaves, lets call it.
agree 100%. I am about as poor as one can get without being completely destitute, but I don't even qualify for California CalFresh ($190) food assistance. It's fucking pathetic!
Thanks, Cindy, I see your point, but to me it's OK for the government to say to poor people that we'll give you free healthy food but not free junk food. I don't see it as a mandate--people can still buy junk food if they want.
And I agree to go after the pushers. We need to de-incentivize making and marketing junk food, and tax the heck out of super wealthy corporate profiteers, including advertisers.
But the bigger question is, why are there poor people in the first place? Let's have policies to eliminate both super-rich and super-poor, so that everyone can lead a dignified life, participate in good quality jobs, and not need handouts.
Right, I'd qualify that by saying people are poor because of the corporate captured government, which also allows some people to get extra rich by exploiting others. It allows real estate speculators and hedge fund investors to game the system, causing wild fluctuations in housing costs. It allows employers to sabotage union organizing to keep workers divided. It allows unlimited spending on election campaign PACs so that billionaires can buy elected officials and ballot initiatives. If government were truly of, by and for the people, it could be different, and we should accept no less.
At the risk of sounding like a "right winger," people have to take responsibility for what they put in their mouths. It's well known that junk food is junk! Healthy food doesn't have to be expensive either. The "peasant diet" is the healthiest diet. I know we are bombarded with ads tempting us to eat crap but FFS it's the one thing we have some measure of control over.
That said, all subsidies to Big Ag should cease....
I feel like families and communities should be more empowered with info and resources to attack this issue. I am sure it's more prevalent in less advantaged areas.
Everywhere I go I see people eating crap. Rich and poor. Even at the farmers market where fresh produce is abundant, practically everyone is walking around eating donuts as big as their heads. They even bribe their kids with sweets!
So far RFK has endorsed the HPV vaccine, the childhood vaccine schedule and is silent on the deadly COVAX shot while expressing approval of the genocide in Palestine. Another Manchurian Candidate scum sucking Capitalist politician intent on herding his followers back into the charnel house of the political/medical cartels.
Not the specific topic of this essay but it must be said.
Thank you for bringing this up. No I do not support mandates (for 'health'? Says who?) from the Feds or even locally, even more evil in many ways (long story)...
I no longer trust most MDs (sadly too many now are owned by BIGPHARMA, CDC, ignorance and greed, etc. ... they have to pay their mortgages, education debts, and other debts after all?) Not all though. the very courageous, knowledgeable, outspoken Dr. Meryl Nass and those at the and many others at the Independent Medical Alliance (Formerly the FLCCC.net) come to mind, driven to substack of course, and many many many others.
Sadly, DC is now owned by:
-- totally immoral profit driven corporations (where is the law for the people? Did we ever have it?),
-- greedy psychopathic narcissistic billionaires (especially many foreign ones like those who support the genocide against Palestinian? and own Congress in DC and state houses in this country and elsewhere?),
-- profit driven corp owned media etc. totally, except for the internet... for the most part
-- profit driven corporated driven BIGPHARMA,
-- Profit driven totally immoral corporate driven Military Industrial Complex (dare I say Congressional Complex?), did you readwhere Trumpf turned over the new fighter F47 jet to Boeing? the company with so many accidents? Which is why I no longer fly...
--Profit driven so called Dept of Ag with 'advice' to schools re food that is lethal with many poisons,
--profit driven US 'education' up through universities, especially research universities, (also ego driven, narcissistic faculty that no longer teach reality/history) I'm living proof. I've learned more since I graduated about reality historythan I ever learned in School sadly...
The almost total lack of EMPATHY towards results of war, death, destruction, neglect everywhere that this country promulgates overwhelms me frequently? The more I read history (which I did not learn in school as I've mentioned ), especially that this country has participated in for its entire existence to slaughter and kill - the genocide of native Americans and those "imported for slavery" for hundreds of years especially and the current genocide in Palestine from this 'leadership' level overwhelms me at times. This is just a short list of this country's death and destruction. How is this justifiable?
Should we leave it all up to 'the people' ? I think they are too vulnerable IMHO. I wish we could, so we COULD save humanity and all other living beings. But Most in this country have to work 2+ jobs to put so-called "food" on their tables and a roof over their heads (if they even can)for their family who learn all about everything from corpo ads on corpo owned tv and the endless junk food in their schools and around them?
How do we get this country to wake up to how tragic/awful it all is? I'm surrounded (in a wealthy suburban) by people who question none of this.
How to inform people (and teach in schools) how to plant safely, harvest, cook, share/ store/freeze/can and enjoy it all? Share is the key word here - with EVERYONE. Rarely mentioned.
I keep reviewing history.
The lengthy violence of the French Revolution and what followed for morethan a century comes to mind. I studied French, spent time in France and learned much then to now. It seems as though the gov't there at least is afraid of the people and listens to the people (wouldn't that be nice?) - their extensive universal,kind, health care comes to mind. Public transportation free in many cities. Free public schools through universities. Many protections for the 'smaller' entrepreneurial business folk. Less poisons (chemicals? pesticides from profit driven corporations) intheir foods than in this country. People are afraid of everything in this country. Especially prison (now many privatized and beyond cruel) and being deported.
We no longer have the time in this age of the atomic clock, and insanity rule by narcissistic/psychopathic rulers nationally, and locally in many places. Those who speak out (for those of minority groups) are deported, beaten or put in prison if not deported, tossed out of schools for speaking (First amendment?). Where are the peoples' leaders?
As George Carlin said (loosely) 'somewhere in this infinite universe is a better version. This planet is merely a first draft.' I miss Carlin.
I almost believe this planet might survive... but frankly I don't think all living beings on this planet will. Its the ALL LIVING BEINGS I care about not so much humanity at this point. DC wants war with Iran and Russia then the icing on the cake China. We will not 'win' at this point from all that I read and hear. Whatever that might mean? But think of the cruelty, death, destruction. For What?
How have the oligarchs arrived where they are, and have stayed there since this country was founded? Most were slave holders. Even George Washington. Very few were not. Really, how?
I admire/envy people of faith. I wonder where to go at this point?
I do know one thing though that I do have faith is that I will meet up with all my furballs on the other side if there is anything to faith. they simply can not disappear? Especially most of them. They are truly special.
Already, SNAP does not pay for things like hot foods, alcohol, and tobacco. I do think that the big soda corporations may fight the new guidelines. Just - where to start? And, IMO, being the food police can lead to creeping authoritarianism. And yeah, if those things are bad, why can they be sold. Access to big stores with better prices may be limited - smaller stores cannot buy in enough bulk to compete. A real can of worms. Ban snacks, but not seed oils? This is either a tiny start in the right direction, or the start of authoritarian "you may buy only these foods" - which, IMO, leaves us all at the mercy of Bill Gates' Tasty Bugs being mandated. Oh well. Like everything else the government does to us, this will likely be dragged through the courts, watered down for special interests, and used as campaign fodder. Bernie and AOC can throw bags of potato chips to their adoring crowds.
This is the champion fighter against "health tyranny?" You hit on the larger socio-economic root causes. Maybe the "cancer killing mRNA vaccine" is the next mandate?
When RFK Jr. was running for the Dem nomination, he told an interviewer that if he was elected president, he would do what he wanted to do, not necessarily what his voters wanted him to do. Something to that effect.
I don't think it would be a bad idea to restrict candy, chips, soda etc. from SNAP. Problem is so many "conservatives" want to eliminate SNAP and other welfare programs completely which would be a disaster. Or they only want "the poor" (like myself) to eat nothing but rice and beans preferably in sack cloth and ashes. And there's pressure from Big Soda and (believe it or not The American Heart Association) from one side to allow these junk food items, and from the other side we have nothing but "sack cloth and ashes, all rice and beans" only crowd. Those folks think of themselves as quite generous since I think they'd prefer SNAP along with all welfare programs ended entirely. And then the government is put into the position of defining what is "junk food". There are people who consider frozen pizza and O.J. junk food. Hopefully sanity and compromise will prevail. But ultimately, depending on the government is a PIA.
The fact of modern-life, is that da party is over when the bakcards stop working. Americans might fall into the trap of eatnow-swipelater when things get tight. This can't end well.
what about all the people not on SNAP? It's okay for them to consume a ton of shit every day? That's why education and community programs are better than prohibitions, or whatever you want to call them.
Yes, people make their choices, and certainly education, but it takes quit a while. Nowadays I almost never see anyone smoking, as a positive example of long term education.
Rfk Jr won't even use his power as HHS secretary to stop the stupid emergency declaration. This declaration is purely done/ended by the HHS secretary, nothing else.
I suspect that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) exists in large part as an "assistance program" for the junk food suppliers, giving them a captured market upon which to dump their unhealthy wares.
true
Is it a "mandate"?
I'd say that if we are giving our money to help others, it isn't unreasonable to have some determination on where it goes.
This is the description I found for SNAP:
"Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal government program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income persons to help them maintain adequate nutrition and health".
Assuming that's accurate, I'd focus on the "nutrition and health" part. If the money is being used on junk that will inevitably lead to more public money having to be provided for the consequences, then I don't have a problem with it.
A case could be made that if left unchecked, are we not the metaphoric enablers of addicts? I wouldn't want to see my tax money given to an alcoholic to buy booze. So, is it really wrong to not want tax dollars to feed junk food addictions?
Good points, but, do you think it's appropriate to punish the addict and not the pusher?
I wish everyone would eat healthier and I wish everyone would question vaccines, and I wish everyone would quit smoking, drinking, doing harmful drugs, having unprotected sex, and I wish everyone would get up and move....I also wish we could have more control over our tax money and quit spending it on war. A lot of communities give clean needles to addicts. They left liquor stores open during covid so alkies wouldn't go through withdrawals.
What I am saying, is that I don't trust the federal government to make choices for me (I don't get food benefits) and people who do receive food benefits exist in an already completely formed society. The PTB would not force addicts to go cold turkey and they don't force alkies to go cold turkey AND they still sell cigarettes.
Does Bobs believe in freedom of choice, or not?
Alcoholics can’t live on booze. While not optimal you can get some nutrition from junk food. Mandates and nanny state tyranny is always bad.
that's a good point, sometimes it's about convenient calories.
I hate that a dozen eggs is almost three times as much as a case of top ramen.
:(
Not to mention a reasonably healthy loaf of bread here in SF is around 6 or 7 dollars.
Here in Wackyville as well
"I should fund...", Egoist. How about he doubling food stamps instead of throwing people off. I have a friend who lost food stamps because 6-Flags closed their theme park during the holidays due to storm related damage. You can work with Food-Stamps but can't have Food-Stamps if you don't work, apparently. Seems more fuedalism than democracy. Government Subsidizing the Basic Nutrition Needs of Private Wage-Slaves, lets call it.
agree 100%. I am about as poor as one can get without being completely destitute, but I don't even qualify for California CalFresh ($190) food assistance. It's fucking pathetic!
My solution is to live in Africa - Africa: The Last Refuge of the White Man
You , Hunter Biden, and Baby Doc Zelenskyy
Thanks, Cindy, I see your point, but to me it's OK for the government to say to poor people that we'll give you free healthy food but not free junk food. I don't see it as a mandate--people can still buy junk food if they want.
And I agree to go after the pushers. We need to de-incentivize making and marketing junk food, and tax the heck out of super wealthy corporate profiteers, including advertisers.
But the bigger question is, why are there poor people in the first place? Let's have policies to eliminate both super-rich and super-poor, so that everyone can lead a dignified life, participate in good quality jobs, and not need handouts.
Most people are poor because of the government....
Just saying.
Right, I'd qualify that by saying people are poor because of the corporate captured government, which also allows some people to get extra rich by exploiting others. It allows real estate speculators and hedge fund investors to game the system, causing wild fluctuations in housing costs. It allows employers to sabotage union organizing to keep workers divided. It allows unlimited spending on election campaign PACs so that billionaires can buy elected officials and ballot initiatives. If government were truly of, by and for the people, it could be different, and we should accept no less.
At the risk of sounding like a "right winger," people have to take responsibility for what they put in their mouths. It's well known that junk food is junk! Healthy food doesn't have to be expensive either. The "peasant diet" is the healthiest diet. I know we are bombarded with ads tempting us to eat crap but FFS it's the one thing we have some measure of control over.
That said, all subsidies to Big Ag should cease....
I feel like families and communities should be more empowered with info and resources to attack this issue. I am sure it's more prevalent in less advantaged areas.
Everywhere I go I see people eating crap. Rich and poor. Even at the farmers market where fresh produce is abundant, practically everyone is walking around eating donuts as big as their heads. They even bribe their kids with sweets!
yep....so true.
The crap is so (purposefully) addicting.
Sometimes people have to make the best decisions with what is available to them.
Good points!
HELL NO to 'Nanny State' bullies! Educate! Do not mandate!
"Nanny State Bullies"
Amen!
Eat the rich. Boy has the price increased! TY Cindy &Co..
Pretty sure the rich would taste like rancid skunk's butthole.
I'll pass.
Smoked might be good, and not eating!
So far RFK has endorsed the HPV vaccine, the childhood vaccine schedule and is silent on the deadly COVAX shot while expressing approval of the genocide in Palestine. Another Manchurian Candidate scum sucking Capitalist politician intent on herding his followers back into the charnel house of the political/medical cartels.
Not the specific topic of this essay but it must be said.
thanks for saying it!
xo
Thank you for bringing this up. No I do not support mandates (for 'health'? Says who?) from the Feds or even locally, even more evil in many ways (long story)...
I no longer trust most MDs (sadly too many now are owned by BIGPHARMA, CDC, ignorance and greed, etc. ... they have to pay their mortgages, education debts, and other debts after all?) Not all though. the very courageous, knowledgeable, outspoken Dr. Meryl Nass and those at the and many others at the Independent Medical Alliance (Formerly the FLCCC.net) come to mind, driven to substack of course, and many many many others.
Sadly, DC is now owned by:
-- totally immoral profit driven corporations (where is the law for the people? Did we ever have it?),
-- greedy psychopathic narcissistic billionaires (especially many foreign ones like those who support the genocide against Palestinian? and own Congress in DC and state houses in this country and elsewhere?),
-- profit driven corp owned media etc. totally, except for the internet... for the most part
-- profit driven corporated driven BIGPHARMA,
-- Profit driven totally immoral corporate driven Military Industrial Complex (dare I say Congressional Complex?), did you readwhere Trumpf turned over the new fighter F47 jet to Boeing? the company with so many accidents? Which is why I no longer fly...
--Profit driven so called Dept of Ag with 'advice' to schools re food that is lethal with many poisons,
--profit driven US 'education' up through universities, especially research universities, (also ego driven, narcissistic faculty that no longer teach reality/history) I'm living proof. I've learned more since I graduated about reality historythan I ever learned in School sadly...
The almost total lack of EMPATHY towards results of war, death, destruction, neglect everywhere that this country promulgates overwhelms me frequently? The more I read history (which I did not learn in school as I've mentioned ), especially that this country has participated in for its entire existence to slaughter and kill - the genocide of native Americans and those "imported for slavery" for hundreds of years especially and the current genocide in Palestine from this 'leadership' level overwhelms me at times. This is just a short list of this country's death and destruction. How is this justifiable?
Should we leave it all up to 'the people' ? I think they are too vulnerable IMHO. I wish we could, so we COULD save humanity and all other living beings. But Most in this country have to work 2+ jobs to put so-called "food" on their tables and a roof over their heads (if they even can)for their family who learn all about everything from corpo ads on corpo owned tv and the endless junk food in their schools and around them?
How do we get this country to wake up to how tragic/awful it all is? I'm surrounded (in a wealthy suburban) by people who question none of this.
How to inform people (and teach in schools) how to plant safely, harvest, cook, share/ store/freeze/can and enjoy it all? Share is the key word here - with EVERYONE. Rarely mentioned.
I keep reviewing history.
The lengthy violence of the French Revolution and what followed for morethan a century comes to mind. I studied French, spent time in France and learned much then to now. It seems as though the gov't there at least is afraid of the people and listens to the people (wouldn't that be nice?) - their extensive universal,kind, health care comes to mind. Public transportation free in many cities. Free public schools through universities. Many protections for the 'smaller' entrepreneurial business folk. Less poisons (chemicals? pesticides from profit driven corporations) intheir foods than in this country. People are afraid of everything in this country. Especially prison (now many privatized and beyond cruel) and being deported.
We no longer have the time in this age of the atomic clock, and insanity rule by narcissistic/psychopathic rulers nationally, and locally in many places. Those who speak out (for those of minority groups) are deported, beaten or put in prison if not deported, tossed out of schools for speaking (First amendment?). Where are the peoples' leaders?
As George Carlin said (loosely) 'somewhere in this infinite universe is a better version. This planet is merely a first draft.' I miss Carlin.
I almost believe this planet might survive... but frankly I don't think all living beings on this planet will. Its the ALL LIVING BEINGS I care about not so much humanity at this point. DC wants war with Iran and Russia then the icing on the cake China. We will not 'win' at this point from all that I read and hear. Whatever that might mean? But think of the cruelty, death, destruction. For What?
How have the oligarchs arrived where they are, and have stayed there since this country was founded? Most were slave holders. Even George Washington. Very few were not. Really, how?
I admire/envy people of faith. I wonder where to go at this point?
I do know one thing though that I do have faith is that I will meet up with all my furballs on the other side if there is anything to faith. they simply can not disappear? Especially most of them. They are truly special.
Thanks again Cindy.
thanks for your very interesting and comprehensive comments, Jean!
Agree, 100%
Already, SNAP does not pay for things like hot foods, alcohol, and tobacco. I do think that the big soda corporations may fight the new guidelines. Just - where to start? And, IMO, being the food police can lead to creeping authoritarianism. And yeah, if those things are bad, why can they be sold. Access to big stores with better prices may be limited - smaller stores cannot buy in enough bulk to compete. A real can of worms. Ban snacks, but not seed oils? This is either a tiny start in the right direction, or the start of authoritarian "you may buy only these foods" - which, IMO, leaves us all at the mercy of Bill Gates' Tasty Bugs being mandated. Oh well. Like everything else the government does to us, this will likely be dragged through the courts, watered down for special interests, and used as campaign fodder. Bernie and AOC can throw bags of potato chips to their adoring crowds.
Good points---it was, after all, just a tweet from Bobs.
Peace
This is the champion fighter against "health tyranny?" You hit on the larger socio-economic root causes. Maybe the "cancer killing mRNA vaccine" is the next mandate?
that is my point, Ned.
I don't trust the feds, at all. I don't trust Sacramento, at all---Bobs went from a grassroots supporter of health to a tyrant.
Hmmm.......
we'll see.
"a tyrant?" Far too negative Cindy.
In your opinion, Jon. Of course, you are more than entitled to it.
When RFK Jr. was running for the Dem nomination, he told an interviewer that if he was elected president, he would do what he wanted to do, not necessarily what his voters wanted him to do. Something to that effect.
I don't think it would be a bad idea to restrict candy, chips, soda etc. from SNAP. Problem is so many "conservatives" want to eliminate SNAP and other welfare programs completely which would be a disaster. Or they only want "the poor" (like myself) to eat nothing but rice and beans preferably in sack cloth and ashes. And there's pressure from Big Soda and (believe it or not The American Heart Association) from one side to allow these junk food items, and from the other side we have nothing but "sack cloth and ashes, all rice and beans" only crowd. Those folks think of themselves as quite generous since I think they'd prefer SNAP along with all welfare programs ended entirely. And then the government is put into the position of defining what is "junk food". There are people who consider frozen pizza and O.J. junk food. Hopefully sanity and compromise will prevail. But ultimately, depending on the government is a PIA.
Thanks for giving us just the right phrase to disagree with RFK, Jr's approach: Go after the pushers, not the users.
I've long be of the opinion that SNAP should not cover sodas and candies. Now, if the item has a nutrition label on it, it can be purchased.
So then they cannot buy fruits, veggies, and/or meats?
:)
thanks!
Removing junk food form SNAP does not preclude people getting it in their own. Not a mandate.
I am sure candy-bars and chips are the most-stolen Not-Snaps out there. It's the 7-11 to Prison Pipeline
The fact of modern-life, is that da party is over when the bakcards stop working. Americans might fall into the trap of eatnow-swipelater when things get tight. This can't end well.
what about all the people not on SNAP? It's okay for them to consume a ton of shit every day? That's why education and community programs are better than prohibitions, or whatever you want to call them.
Yes, people make their choices, and certainly education, but it takes quit a while. Nowadays I almost never see anyone smoking, as a positive example of long term education.
i was only using the vernacular of the 2020s.
Rfk Jr won't even use his power as HHS secretary to stop the stupid emergency declaration. This declaration is purely done/ended by the HHS secretary, nothing else.
More info here.
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-the-hhs-secretary