Support for Making Food Stamps Healthy
Everybody deserves healthy food, including the millions of Americans participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. A new poll released by the Physicians Committee finds 80 percent agree that SNAP should emphasize foods such as vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains that prevent diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
In the Mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, 82 percent of respondents support proposed legislation that would give SNAP participants a higher benefit for purchases of fruits and vegetables. In the South, including West Virginia, 79 percent support financial incentives for healthful food.
Each month, this U.S. Department of Agriculture program provides nutrition assistance to 44 million low-income individuals in 21.8 million U.S. households. Children make up nearly half of SNAP participants. But SNAP isn’t currently set up to help them get the good nutrition they need.
SNAP Subsidizes Unhealthy Foods
Instead, SNAP subsidizes retailers for selling the same foods high in sugars, saturated fats, and sodium that the USDA tells Americans to avoid in the Dietary Guidelines and on MyPlate. More than half of SNAP benefits are taken by retailers for meats, sweetened beverages, prepared foods and desserts, cheese, salty snacks, candy, and sugar. Just 23.9 percent go for fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, beans, seeds, and spices.
SNAP Increases Disease Risk
That hurts the health of SNAP participants, putting them at greater risk of death from diabetes and heart disease than nonparticipants. Forty percent of adult SNAP participants are also obese, versus 32 percent for nonparticipants at the same income level nonparticipants. Economically disadvantaged Americans also have 70 percent higher incidence of diabetes and 19 percent higher incidence of hypertension, compared with wealthier Americans.
To help SNAP participants avert these diseases, the American Medical Association has asked the USDA to incentivize healthful foods and discourage or eliminate unhealthful foods.
Healthy Staples: Better Food for More People
“Healthy Staples” is a plan that could help achieve this goal. It’s inspired by a USDA program called the Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC. WIC is based on the use of foods packages that include foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that are deemed to provide good nutrition.
“Healthy Staples” would pay participating grocers who supply basic healthful foods: grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, and basic multiple vitamins.
Participants choosing solely from the “Healthy Staples” plan would likely get more than twice the fiber, iron, vitamin E, and folate; almost twice the potassium, calcium, and magnesium; almost 40 percent more vitamin D; and more than five times more beta-carotene than those following a typical American diet.
A “Healthy Staples” participant would also consume 65 percent less fat and 85 percent less saturated fat, and the excess of 250 milligrams of cholesterol consumed daily would be reduced to essentially zero.
By modeling SNAP on “Healthy Staples,” the USDA could provide better food for more people, helping improve the health of America’s economically disadvantaged.
Jeanne Stuart McVey