The Family Size bag of Golden Oreos was on special at the grocery store, so, I didn’t object when one fell into my cart.
Once home I sat down to enjoy a modest half serving – three cookies – with my lunch. Right next to me our Jack Russell Terrier made a pitiful noise and looked up at me with eyes implying she faced imminent starvation. I was then down to two cookies.
Oh, Kim She didn’t gobble-down her treat: she hid it, took it to bed with her and growled in its defense if we strayed too close. Despite almost eight years with us, memories of time on the street and in a rescue shelter demand that our dog protect her Oreo.
Though we seldom growl, most all of us enjoy tasty things like Oreos and donuts or a cold beverage spiked with sugar or alcohol (or if we’re lucky both sugar and alcohol). Of course, poor people aren’t to be allowed to enjoy life.
The other week New York Times carried a story referencing a November 2016 study by the United States Department of Agriculture on how food stamp families spend their benefits
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html?_r=0 . The article stated that low-income folks getting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program help spent ‘significantly more’ of their food budget on “sweetened beverages” than Americans in general. Well, kinda.
Foods Purchased By SNAP Households, USDA Nov. 2016, notes, “Across all households, more money was spent on soft drinks than any other item. SNAP households spent somewhat more on soft drinks than non-SNAP households (5 versus 4 percent.)” Yet, the study also notes that non-SNAP households spend a lot more money on food, meaning, for example, 4% of $100 is more than 5% of $50.
Yes, all Americans spend too much on sweetened beverages. And, as in all households, food stamp families would be healthier if they spend less on soft drinks.
Alas, remember these three “A’s:”
Access: In most areas there are more places to buy soft drinks than milk. No one builds large grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods or small towns. When you’re thirsty in many places the only choices are sweetened or artificially sweetened soft drinks.
Affordability: I was thrilled when a gallon of skim milk dropped to $2.78 a gallon at the grocer nearest my home. That same store had name-brand soda pop at “Buy One, Get One,” meaning that $2.78 would buy one gallon of milk or 12 liters (six bottles) of soda.
Advertising: Yes, once in a while you might see a “Got Milk?” ad. How many ads for ‘sweetened beverages’ did you see today?
“Left to their own devices, people have little hope of resisting the daily bombardment of soda advertising on television, billboards, and the Internet.” Dr. Marion Nestle of New York University wrote for The Atlantic on July 2, 2012. She further noted in that piece, “This makes sugar-sweetened beverages an obvious target for environmental approaches to obesity prevention…” This morning on KMOX she backed the nanny state belief that folks on food stamps should be prevented from using their resources to buy soda pop and other sweetened beverages. As many others have said recently, she commented that SNAP families ‘can spend their own money’ on soda but not a cent of taxpayer provided food stamps.
The food stamp benefit attempts to supply, at most, just two-thirds of what a good shopper in a “Thrifty” family needs to spend to put healthy meals on the table 21 times a week.
In my decades in food pantries I talked with thousands of struggling people and reviewed the files of thousands more. Guess what? The food stamp benefit is not two-thirds of the family’s food budget. It is virtually all of the family’s food budget! That’s why most families in the food stamp program also regularly visit pantries. In other words, they don’t have “extra” money to spend on items deemed verboten by, well, college professors and important people.
The pantries I ran spent as much as they could on healthy items to add to food orders. At Circle Of Concern we were fortunate to be able to buy hundreds of gallons of skim milk, dozens of bushels of apples and oranges, boxes of bananas, carrots and potatoes, frozen chickens and ground beef and other nutritious foods every week. Once in a while we got soda or cookies donated (many Girl Scout troops use their sales earnings to buy cookies for local pantries), and, we added that to the purchased food and the canned goods collected by friends.
Unfortunately, probably 90% of pantries don’t have the money to buy food. They depend on what they get donated. Often that means Tomato soup, day old bread, canned vegetables and ramen noodles. In the best of times they may share about three days of food to help a family stretch their stamps. Not all days (or months) are the best.
Yes, we want folks to make good choices every time they go to the store and we want them all to shop at grocers with superb selections of fresh produce and aisles of healthy choices. But a bag of Oreos or a couple of bottles of Pepsi once in a while does not ruin any of us. Should I tell my child she can’t have Oreos because other people say she doesn’t deserve them because I’m struggling to get by?
Perhaps the answer acceptable to Professor Nestle and others who know what is best for us is to outlaw all sweetened beverages; all cookies and cakes; burn down Ted Drewes and bulldoze every fast food joint that doesn’t have chick peas and kale as major menu items.
Just don’t ask me to tell the Girl Scouts they can’t sell cookies – or donate them to their local food pantry.
Oh, Kim She eventually ate her Oreo. It took several days. I brought home a box of Mini Nilla Wafers and, after she ate the Oreo, those starving eyes were back.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member