DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Should the government bar food stamps from being used to buy sugary and fatty foods?

**mikelangr** · 06-27-2012, 05:34 PM

On one hand, the government does claim an interest in promoting healthy food, especially with the health care legislation, and especially where the government is paying for it. On the other hand, it could be construed as an invasion of privacy, and it would probably increase the cost of the program due to increased monitoring requirements.

What do you think?

I believe the WIC program already functions like this, and I don't think its administrative costs are greatly in excess of the food stamp administrative costs.

A secondary benefit to restricting the foods available for purchase with food stamps is that it will also help to limit the ability of recipients to sell their food stamps. Ohio (and I think most other states) uses a card rather than physical stamps which in theory would make it more difficult for people to sell them, but in practice this meant that people would wait outside of grocery stores and solicit people to pay them cash for use of their stamp card (typically you'd get $2 worth of groceries for each $1 in cash you paid the food stamp recipient).

06-27-2012, 05:34 PM	#1
mikelangr Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 622 Senior Member	Should the government bar food stamps from being used to buy sugary and fatty foods? On one hand, the government does claim an interest in promoting healthy food, especially with the health care legislation, and especially where the government is paying for it. On the other hand, it could be construed as an invasion of privacy, and it would probably increase the cost of the program due to increased monitoring requirements. What do you think? I believe the WIC program already functions like this, and I don't think its administrative costs are greatly in excess of the food stamp administrative costs. A secondary benefit to restricting the foods available for purchase with food stamps is that it will also help to limit the ability of recipients to sell their food stamps. Ohio (and I think most other states) uses a card rather than physical stamps which in theory would make it more difficult for people to sell them, but in practice this meant that people would wait outside of grocery stores and solicit people to pay them cash for use of their stamp card (typically you'd get $2 worth of groceries for each $1 in cash you paid the food stamp recipient).
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