(Sorry, bleeding hearts. But it's not this simple.)It’s nearly 10 p.m. at the market near our home and I’m standing in line behind a woman with three young children and a cart full of junk food. There are at least six two-liter bottles of soda pop on the bottom of her cart. There are a few bags of potato chips, a stack of frozen dinners and a frozen pie.
There are also some bananas. I take note of this because it’s the only fresh or nutritious food in the cart.
I don’t like the part of me that assumes — with indignant certainty — that this woman is about to pull out her Utah Horizon card.
But that’s what I think.
And that’s what she does.
About 14 percent of Americans now rely on the federally funded and state-administered food stamp program. That’s nearly 45 million people (up more than 60 percent from just four years earlier) who are now swiping state-issued debit cards at markets across the nation.
Paltry little research has been conducted on how these individuals spend their taxpayer-sponsored food dollars. Even less study has gone into how food stamp recipients spend the rest of their money (for instance, the $70 this woman drops on two cartons of Marlboro Lights after she completes her first transaction.)
“Sure, that happens a lot,” the clerk tells me as the woman departs the store, kids in tow. “They come in and buy a bunch of food with their card and then pay cash for beer and cigarettes.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t put much stake in such anecdotes. When the state of Minnesota sought to prevent food-stampers from buying junk food in 2004, the department argued that such a move would only “perpetuate the myth” that those relying on food assistance aren’t capable of making good decisions about what food to buy.
It’s unclear, though, what evidence the department has that suggests that this is, in fact, a myth — save a study it conducted in 1997 in which food stamp users self-reported their spending and dietary habits to survey takers and focus group leaders. Not surprisingly, given those research methods, the study’s authors concluded that most “food stamp participants are savvy shoppers who take care to get the most for their food dollar” and who only buy “convenience foods” due to time pressures and cultural traditions.
Notwithstanding their glowing assessment of food-stampers, the USDA researchers still found that fewer than 10 percent of recipients were eating a healthy diet. No small wonder that a number of other studies have shown a strong link between food stamp usage and obesity — a sad irony given that food assistance was originally intended to help prevent hunger in America.
Meanwhile, federal investigations into food stamp fraud haven’t kept pace with the program’s growth. An analysis by the New England Center of Investigative Reporting showed that fewer than 4,000 investigations were conducted into potential food stamp fraud in 2009. That’s about 2,000 fewer inquires than were conducted in 1995 — even as tens of millions of additional Americans have jumped onto the food stamp roles.
Not that the good gumshoes at the Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General haven’t been busy — nor are the crimes they’re pursuing petty. Last week, a Missouri convenience store manager was sentenced to three years in prison for a stamps-for-cash scheme that cost the government $1.5 million. The USDA estimates it loses at least $2 billion a year in food assistance fraud.
But is that enough of a reason for the U.S. government to play food nanny? Even for those who are eating off the public plate?
No.
When it comes to food assistance, we shouldn’t lose sleep over the idea that adults might make poor decisions with what they’re given. They might buy junk food. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Drugs. They might even rip just off.
Fine. That’s part of the price of the social compact.
We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to any of it (and particularly not the fraud) but we don’t need to go bug-eyed over it, either. It’s not going to bankrupt us.
Problem is, though, that the vast majority of food stamp recipients aren’t adults making poor choices for themselves — they’re children who don’t have any say in how their parents spend our collective food money.
That makes them our collective responsibility — and that’s why the federal government should indeed nanny up on this issue.
Having a hard time wrapping your mind around the idea of being responsible for tens of millions of children? How about just one? If a hungry child from your neighborhood came to your door, would you send her away with a few bucks in her hand and instructions to let her mommy decide what to do with the cash? And what if she was still hungry when she returned to your doorstep the next day?
It’s not just that a lack of education means these children’s parents often don’t understand how to make healthful choices for their families. In many cases, they don’t really have a choice at all.
Studies have shown that low-income Americans are far less likely to have grocery stores in their neighborhoods. That leaves them more reliant on convenience stores like 7-11, which concentrate in lower-income neighborhoods and increasingly accept food stamps for their small selection of generally unhealthy and over-priced food. Meanwhile, researchers have found that, calorie for calorie, junk foods cost less and are less subject to inflation than healthy foods. Further complicating matters: Social psychologists feeling their way around the emerging theory of “depletable self-control” have found that the poor, by virtue of having to make more decisions that consequentially affect their bottom line, have less mental capacity remaining to control other impulses.
But we have the capacity to help food stamp recipients make better decisions for their families — simply by limiting access to unhealthful foods and increasing opportunities to purchase nutritious foods.
First and foremost, it’s long past time for the federal government to get behind efforts like the current push in New York to fight obesity by cutting off food stamp purchases of soda pop and other sugared drinks. A reasonable junk food ban (the Food and Drug Administration has a rather convoluted definition of what constitutes “candy,” but it’s a start) should be next. Will some food stampers simply use their own money to purchase these unhealthy products, as the woman at my local supermarket did to get her cigarettes? Certainly. But that will also force more trade-offs between unhealthy products, compelling greater limitations of all of those things.
Next, the feds should tighten the rules on what kinds of foods markets must offer in order to qualify to accept food stamps. Currently, the standard is simply that the market regularly sells products, including perishables, from most parts of the food chain. The new rules should encourage far more fresh and healthy food offerings. With retailers such as Family Dollar citing food stamps as a major driver of sales, the federal government has all the leverage it needs, right now, to prompt more markets to offer better foods.
Speaking of leverage, no one should expect to get something for nothing. If individuals want to continue receiving food stamps, they should have no problem finding one evening a year (or a few hours online) to participate on a tutorial on home cooking and healthy eating. Healthy decision-making can also be incentivized in the much same way that major supermarkets now offer “rewards points” to frequent shoppers — giving stamp shoppers more credit for nutritious choices.
And finally, we need to find other ways to increase access to healthy foods, including making the technology for accepting food stamp debit cards more available at farmers markets across the country. At Salt Lake City’s Downtown Farmer’s Market, food stampers spent $17,000 last year on fresh and healthy foods. That’s not a bad start, but it represents only a tiny fraction of the $35 million in food stamp purchases made last year in the Beehive State. We can do better.
Matthew D. LaPlante is an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University.
