SNAP and EBT

I watched reaction videos to people reacting to the SNAP cutoff. There are a couple layers, so I’ll break it down. First there is the SNAP cutoff. Then there are reaction videos with people very upset about the cutoff. Then, the videos I’m watching, they are people reacting to those reaction videos.

There are two common comments in these reaction videos are commenting on how the SNAP recipients are overweight and telling them to get a job. As much as I agree with the latter sentiment, it actually isn’t that simple. It should be, but it isn’t.

The first thing to understand is the trap that government benefits are. People dependent on government not only have EBT and SNAP for food, they also have Medicaid for healthcare, Section 8 for housing, and welfare for everything else. If someone tries to get out of that by getting a job, they risk losing all of those at once. I remember reading a news story about a woman who tried to save a small portion of her welfare money each month so that she could escape the system. The welfare office found out and she nearly lost all her benefits.

It’s a trap. Trying to escape the trap destroys the person making the attempt. The job that they get had better be good enough to provide for all the things they lose. Now there are lower end jobs and if a household doesn’t have too many providers and the job doesn’t provide too many hours it can be worthwhile, but cross a certain line and there go all the benefits they have become dependent on.

Another issue is the comment “multiple children by multiple uninvolved men.” This is another government trap. As nonsensical as it is to the average person, those doing this are responding to incentives – government incentives. If a woman in the government support system has one child by one man or two children by one man, the benefit she gets is not appreciably different. If she has two children by two men, she gets a much larger benefit, as she gets that benefit based on how many absent fathers there are. There’s even an incentive to keep the fathers uninvolved, for even more benefits. It is a bad incentive that creates a bad outcome, but to a certain extent they are responding to incentives.

But the comments that stick out to me the most are those about the weight of those on government assistance. It is said that people who can be that overweight cannot be nutritionally deficient. There are many problems with that.

First, leaving the question of government assistance aside, it is often the case that obese people are undernourished. Ask an intensive care nurse for their problems with morbidly obsess, and if they can answer without violating HIPA they can educate you. The family is often worried that the patient won’t get enough to eat, saying things like “he likes to have a key lime pie every day at two o’clock.” This, as I said, doesn’t have anything to do with government assistance, but with obesity in general.

Back to those who need government assistance, especially food assistance. The food benefits come in once a month. When a person is at the lower end of the economic spectrum, driving a lot is not recommended. It uses gas, and it creates wear and tear on the car. You don’t want to make many trips, so when the assistance arrives that is shopping day. Since the objective is to avoid using the car more than necessary then the objective is to get food that will last a long time, until the end of the month, and to get food that is as inexpensive as possible to stretch the food stamp dollar.

Those foods are not healthy. Compare the nutritional value of canned green beans versus frozen green beans versus fresh green beans. The numbers are not the same. However, canned is the cheapest per ounce and preserves the longest. Therefore it makes economic sense to favor canned over frozen and frozen over fresh.

Take beverages that might be served with dinner. A can of frozen concentrated lemonade, store brand, costs approximately two dollars at the grocery store nearest to me. A packet of powdered drink mix, name brand, costs fifty cents there. Now frozen concentrated lemonade has real fruit and fruit juice in it. Although it is a sweet drink it has nutritional value. On the other hand, the powdered drink mix is entirely flavor and color, so drinking it is essentially the same as drinking sugar water. Also those packets of powdered drink mix have impossibly long expiration dates, they will certainly last beyond the next shopping trip if allowed to.

Fruit is another factor. Fresh fruit goes bad, so there is no point in purchasing enough fruit to last the whole month. A can of peaches costs in the same range as a peach, but can be divided up among several kids, and gives them a sugar rush as well when the syrup is taken into account. It is a way to get kids to have fruit to eat, but not the best way.

Look at the nutritional value of inexpensive foods. Frozen meals are generally full of fat, sugar, and salt, which all act as preservatives, as well as ingredients so polysyllabic that it takes a professional biochemist to read them. To get adequate nutrition from that source generally means eating an unhealthy amount of other ingredients.

It is true that on a limited budget people can eat a healthy diet. It is a challenge, it takes a lot of work, but it is possible. If a person is properly educated in nutrition and has the time to devote to the cause, then it can be done. That’s why I am a big supporter of home gardens and even home chicken coops. Not everyone has the time and resources to devote to such a thing, and of those that do not all of them have knowledge.

It takes a lot of work, and for someone dealing with multiple kids, unaided, no help from the fathers of the kids, and at most one income, there is an incentive to do what is quick and easy. Put a frozen meal in the microwave, open a can, serve a sugary drink to go with it, and that is a recipe for obesity among those trapped in the government system.

I’m not surprised that many people on assistance are overweight. Nor am I surprised that they are malnourished. I think people criticizing snap recipients need to know these things and be more aware of the nature of the government trap the poor are in.