Starting Nov. 4, USDA requires SNAP retailers to stock 28 real food varieties across proteins, grains, dairy, and produce. 22 states now ban soda and candy purchases. A major win for MAHA.
It's unfortunate that this sort of performative posturing via virtue signaling announcements takes the place of real work for actual improvements. Podcasts and pressers and Fox.
And requirements like - "Retailers accepting SNAP must offer seven varieties of items in each of the following four categories: protein, grains, dairy, and fruits/vegetables" already exist. That's why most US 7-11's offer a small selection of nasty, shriveled apples, oranges and bananas.
You're mostly just forcing small markets and neighborhood stores out of the SNAP program, while the dollar store chains will always be able to keep up with the government's games.
Our government paying for junk food is hard to explain without inferring a desire somewhere in government to poison the poor, or massive indifference to poisoning the poor.
I totally support only allowing the purchase of real food (fresh, canned, frozen, or dried) with snap benefits. But to require a basically non grocery like Dollar Tree or Dollar General to become more of a grocery? This may just further restrict someone’s already limited access to food if these stores quit accepting food stamps or maybe quit stocking grocery items all together. Serious government overreach!!
I just commented similarly. Chains like (private equity owned) Dollar General will always be able to keep up with these games, if they choose to. Small neighborhood markets and corner stores will be hit hardest by this type of thing, and their customers.
Don't blame the retailer for stocking what the consumer buys. That is total BS. Simply limit the snap approved products to not include soda, chips, candy bars etc. The black market for trading your snap benefits for booze and pot already exist. Its not the retailers that are the problem. Its the government approved benefits.
You can force retailer to stock lettuce all you want but if you can still buy Pepsi with snap, then the lettuce will just rot.
Recent USDA analyses estimate SNAP benefit trafficking at roughly 1.0 to 1.6% of SNAP benefits nationwide. It happens, but rarely. Fraud in order to get more benefits to buy food is more of an issue.
As far as "stocking what the customer wants," it was more about allowing stores where SNAP recipients live to accept payment by SNAP. Until the last decade or so, small retailer POS systems often weren't capable of these kinds of more finely grained categorizations.
Corner bodegas and rural and gas station convenience stores stuck a lot of junk food because they always have.
Our government is ludicrous. It’s ludicrous because it allows corporations that systematically put poisons in our food to be allowed (via lobbyists) to make the laws that allow them to profit while pushing this garbage on people, claiming it’s nutrition. It also allows the same corporations to profit through pharma “remedies” when it makes us sick. Their tentacles reach far and wide.
I want people to be self sufficient, but occasionally in life, we all need a little help, one way or another. These benefits should be temporary, and encourage able bodied people to work and fend for themselves as soon as they can. The U.S. Government bureaucrats are specialists in making people dependent on “The System.”
You need to include in stories like this, a list of the lawmakers who were swayed by the soda industry and voted to keep the poison available to the SNAP users. Everyone needs desperately to know who they are voting for or against and each of these offenders should be removed from office in the next election cycle.
More government control of grocery stores. What could go wrong? And stop disparaging perfectly healthy frozen and canned foods, especially fruit and vegetables. Studies show that they are just as healthy as their "fresh" equivalents, often cost less, last longer, and are often safer. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4517017/
What about people who don't bake or decorate, but who have kids who expect 24 to 36 cupcakes to take to school for their classroom party, and cake for 8 to 16 friends and family on birthdays? The graduations, big games and major holidays put baked goods as traditional expectations. Is Betty Crocker healthier? Cheaper? It's a lot for taxpayers to support. Who explains it to SNAP families with parents out of work? Where are the makers of totally natural food colorings, or cheap low sugar cakes?
SNAP should be more like WIC. And it should not be for abled bodied people. Its disturbing that anyone should have to pay for treats for someone else....that they cant afford to buy themselves. And thats the case for so many people. And why only 22 states? Can they just cross borders and shop?
Making these common sense requirements makes good community sense. I would also like to see a ban on added sugar, not natural sugar, but added sugar that brings the total sugar ingested per serving to over 18-20 of just that food. When one serving of added sugar often hits 50-60 sugars, and that is combned with other added sugars in other foods, it becomes almost impossible to not go into the high blood ranges that are unhealthy and trigger diabetes. Four such high sugar items a day destroys the metabolism and brings on Type 2 diabetes. That is way too much sugar for the body to handle metabolically, when added sugar brings the serving dose into 20-50 and higher. When this much sugar becomes the daily addiction, and surely addiction to sugar has a huge mind-controlling focus on getting more of it, the A1C test can be soon be the diabetic range far too quickly. We need to require added sugar levels to be lower than 1/4 of the daily harm from any food.
I would also like to see a ban on chemicals being added to food. If manufacturer's limited the included chemicals to only one, I suspect it would make a big difference.
We need GMOs and Genetic Engineered Food clearly labeled as such. We need approximate glysophate levels and at least the test results of the 4 heavy metals required to be tested at least in supplements, as they should be tested in food products, too. Such test results should show the actual amounts found in this batch testing as part of the legal requirements on the ingredient label.
With the cost of food rising... what fehkin difference does it make ??? Meats ... damn near 50 bucks for a 10 lb roll of hamburger meat, beef roasts... damn near 20-30 bucks for a 2 pound nasty looking roast. Pork ... just as pricey... now, they're switching out natural meats for lab grown meats... I'll eat beans and cornbread before I eat that nasty shit. We are in the process of raising our own meats and processing them for the freezer or canning. The ONLY WAY you can eat healthy this day and time is to grow and raise your own food.
On the other hand, there is still the homeless who have limited options as to where they can shop for food. They are not welcome around most grocery stores due to their presentation and sometimes odorousness. And also no where to store foods most people refrigerate I know first hand the severely mentally ill just buy what catches their eye rather than what's part of the food pyramid..
I live in a city with a huge homeless population. Early on I was told that no one will go hungry in this city because there are so many services providing free food ... Most of it quite healthy too. I found this to be very true so we have to be very careful in understanding our specific communities about what works and about what needs to be fixed.
Not sure if it was nice or not but I never locked down . . . instead volunteered with food pantries & homeless . . . the most marginalized so most affected by the Plandemic.
A grocery store screen approved a box of cereal and refused a child’s drink that had less sugar in it. Then it thanked the mother.
I wrote the man who designed that rule a thank-you note.
Dear Secretary Kennedy,
I am writing to thank you. I have learned that letters of complaint are read by an assistant and letters of gratitude are sometimes read by the man himself, and what I have to say I would like you to hear in your own voice as you read it.
You said, in March, that SNAP would put nutrition back at the center, and that millions of families would have greater access to real food. I want to report, from the checkout line of a grocery store in Louisiana, which did as you asked in January, that the policy works exactly as written. I have watched it. I feel I owe you the account, since the men who design a thing so rarely get to see it land.
There was a young mother ahead of me, and she had eight items, and the screen took seven. The eighth was a blue sports drink her child drinks. The screen turned it gray and would not have it. The screen had, a moment before, accepted a box of cereal containing more sugar than the drink it refused. You have built a system that can tell, with perfect confidence, the difference between two sugars on the basis of which one comes in a bottle. I could not have done it. I doubt the mother could have. The screen did it in under a second and thanked her after.
You said greater access to real food, and the access is indeed greater, in the precise sense that she now has access to fewer things, and fewer things are easier to choose among. The eighty cents she did not spend on the blue drink stayed in the account, where it waits for the three-dollar juice she cannot afford, which is real food, and now within her greater access.
I was struck by one feature I am not certain you intended. The decision to deny the drink was made in Washington. By the time it reached the store it had become hers — she was the one who said no, out loud, to her son, who is three, and who watched the bottles go back into the cashier’s hand. You have arranged for it to be administered by the mother. The boy will not grow up resenting a policy. He will grow up having watched his mother refuse him. He will never learn the name of the man who sent the gray to the screen. He will only ever know her face.
I do not know what the boy will drink instead. The tap, perhaps, which he distrusts, for reasons I am sure are unscientific and which your department is welcome to correct in him. I know he will remember the gray, and the green that came after, and the small sound the machine made — the same chime it makes for everyone, the chime that does not distinguish between a thing bought and a thing surrendered. You have made many fine distinctions, Mr. Secretary. The machine cannot make that one. It seems a small thing beside the rest.
So I thank you. The nutrition is back at the center. The families have their greater access. And in a state that did as you asked, a three-year-old is learning the first rule of the country he was born into: that there are things you may see and not have, and that the person who tells you which will be made to look like the one who chose it.
With admiration for the completeness of the design,
Josiah Pell
who stood in the line
She has her own account of that checkout. → “The Screen Said No”
It's unfortunate that this sort of performative posturing via virtue signaling announcements takes the place of real work for actual improvements. Podcasts and pressers and Fox.
And requirements like - "Retailers accepting SNAP must offer seven varieties of items in each of the following four categories: protein, grains, dairy, and fruits/vegetables" already exist. That's why most US 7-11's offer a small selection of nasty, shriveled apples, oranges and bananas.
You're mostly just forcing small markets and neighborhood stores out of the SNAP program, while the dollar store chains will always be able to keep up with the government's games.
Our government paying for junk food is hard to explain without inferring a desire somewhere in government to poison the poor, or massive indifference to poisoning the poor.
Junk food companies hiring lobbyists and paying bribes could work... Yes, "indifference", of course.
I totally support only allowing the purchase of real food (fresh, canned, frozen, or dried) with snap benefits. But to require a basically non grocery like Dollar Tree or Dollar General to become more of a grocery? This may just further restrict someone’s already limited access to food if these stores quit accepting food stamps or maybe quit stocking grocery items all together. Serious government overreach!!
I just commented similarly. Chains like (private equity owned) Dollar General will always be able to keep up with these games, if they choose to. Small neighborhood markets and corner stores will be hit hardest by this type of thing, and their customers.
Oh, those poor "smaller" stores that rake in our tax dollars while selling nothing but unhealthy crap. Please.
Not at all. It simply means they can no longer rake in our tax dollars by selling nothing but unhealthy crap.
Don't blame the retailer for stocking what the consumer buys. That is total BS. Simply limit the snap approved products to not include soda, chips, candy bars etc. The black market for trading your snap benefits for booze and pot already exist. Its not the retailers that are the problem. Its the government approved benefits.
You can force retailer to stock lettuce all you want but if you can still buy Pepsi with snap, then the lettuce will just rot.
Recent USDA analyses estimate SNAP benefit trafficking at roughly 1.0 to 1.6% of SNAP benefits nationwide. It happens, but rarely. Fraud in order to get more benefits to buy food is more of an issue.
As far as "stocking what the customer wants," it was more about allowing stores where SNAP recipients live to accept payment by SNAP. Until the last decade or so, small retailer POS systems often weren't capable of these kinds of more finely grained categorizations.
Corner bodegas and rural and gas station convenience stores stuck a lot of junk food because they always have.
Our government is ludicrous. It’s ludicrous because it allows corporations that systematically put poisons in our food to be allowed (via lobbyists) to make the laws that allow them to profit while pushing this garbage on people, claiming it’s nutrition. It also allows the same corporations to profit through pharma “remedies” when it makes us sick. Their tentacles reach far and wide.
I want people to be self sufficient, but occasionally in life, we all need a little help, one way or another. These benefits should be temporary, and encourage able bodied people to work and fend for themselves as soon as they can. The U.S. Government bureaucrats are specialists in making people dependent on “The System.”
You need to include in stories like this, a list of the lawmakers who were swayed by the soda industry and voted to keep the poison available to the SNAP users. Everyone needs desperately to know who they are voting for or against and each of these offenders should be removed from office in the next election cycle.
More government control of grocery stores. What could go wrong? And stop disparaging perfectly healthy frozen and canned foods, especially fruit and vegetables. Studies show that they are just as healthy as their "fresh" equivalents, often cost less, last longer, and are often safer. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4517017/
Nobody's "disparaging" canned fruit & vegies.
This should help a lot.
In reversing the widespread trend of nutritionless edibles and beverages.
What about people who don't bake or decorate, but who have kids who expect 24 to 36 cupcakes to take to school for their classroom party, and cake for 8 to 16 friends and family on birthdays? The graduations, big games and major holidays put baked goods as traditional expectations. Is Betty Crocker healthier? Cheaper? It's a lot for taxpayers to support. Who explains it to SNAP families with parents out of work? Where are the makers of totally natural food colorings, or cheap low sugar cakes?
SNAP should be more like WIC. And it should not be for abled bodied people. Its disturbing that anyone should have to pay for treats for someone else....that they cant afford to buy themselves. And thats the case for so many people. And why only 22 states? Can they just cross borders and shop?
I support this but rural retailers may need help beyond the regular reimbursements to maintain fresh produce.
Making these common sense requirements makes good community sense. I would also like to see a ban on added sugar, not natural sugar, but added sugar that brings the total sugar ingested per serving to over 18-20 of just that food. When one serving of added sugar often hits 50-60 sugars, and that is combned with other added sugars in other foods, it becomes almost impossible to not go into the high blood ranges that are unhealthy and trigger diabetes. Four such high sugar items a day destroys the metabolism and brings on Type 2 diabetes. That is way too much sugar for the body to handle metabolically, when added sugar brings the serving dose into 20-50 and higher. When this much sugar becomes the daily addiction, and surely addiction to sugar has a huge mind-controlling focus on getting more of it, the A1C test can be soon be the diabetic range far too quickly. We need to require added sugar levels to be lower than 1/4 of the daily harm from any food.
I would also like to see a ban on chemicals being added to food. If manufacturer's limited the included chemicals to only one, I suspect it would make a big difference.
We need GMOs and Genetic Engineered Food clearly labeled as such. We need approximate glysophate levels and at least the test results of the 4 heavy metals required to be tested at least in supplements, as they should be tested in food products, too. Such test results should show the actual amounts found in this batch testing as part of the legal requirements on the ingredient label.
With the cost of food rising... what fehkin difference does it make ??? Meats ... damn near 50 bucks for a 10 lb roll of hamburger meat, beef roasts... damn near 20-30 bucks for a 2 pound nasty looking roast. Pork ... just as pricey... now, they're switching out natural meats for lab grown meats... I'll eat beans and cornbread before I eat that nasty shit. We are in the process of raising our own meats and processing them for the freezer or canning. The ONLY WAY you can eat healthy this day and time is to grow and raise your own food.
On the other hand, there is still the homeless who have limited options as to where they can shop for food. They are not welcome around most grocery stores due to their presentation and sometimes odorousness. And also no where to store foods most people refrigerate I know first hand the severely mentally ill just buy what catches their eye rather than what's part of the food pyramid..
I live in a city with a huge homeless population. Early on I was told that no one will go hungry in this city because there are so many services providing free food ... Most of it quite healthy too. I found this to be very true so we have to be very careful in understanding our specific communities about what works and about what needs to be fixed.
By helping to prepare it, serve it and eating it.
Not sure if it was nice or not but I never locked down . . . instead volunteered with food pantries & homeless . . . the most marginalized so most affected by the Plandemic.
Sorry to hear about your east coast experiences. We might have it better here not only because of huge homelessness, but also huge poverty level - Southwest USA. Check this out for possible referral idea in your area - https://www.rrfb.org/about-us/our-programs/health-wellness-initiative/healthy-foods-center/.
With a doctor's referral/order, people can get even healthier food - FREE
Damn Republicans who voted against it. Let's primary their assese
A grocery store screen approved a box of cereal and refused a child’s drink that had less sugar in it. Then it thanked the mother.
I wrote the man who designed that rule a thank-you note.
Dear Secretary Kennedy,
I am writing to thank you. I have learned that letters of complaint are read by an assistant and letters of gratitude are sometimes read by the man himself, and what I have to say I would like you to hear in your own voice as you read it.
You said, in March, that SNAP would put nutrition back at the center, and that millions of families would have greater access to real food. I want to report, from the checkout line of a grocery store in Louisiana, which did as you asked in January, that the policy works exactly as written. I have watched it. I feel I owe you the account, since the men who design a thing so rarely get to see it land.
There was a young mother ahead of me, and she had eight items, and the screen took seven. The eighth was a blue sports drink her child drinks. The screen turned it gray and would not have it. The screen had, a moment before, accepted a box of cereal containing more sugar than the drink it refused. You have built a system that can tell, with perfect confidence, the difference between two sugars on the basis of which one comes in a bottle. I could not have done it. I doubt the mother could have. The screen did it in under a second and thanked her after.
You said greater access to real food, and the access is indeed greater, in the precise sense that she now has access to fewer things, and fewer things are easier to choose among. The eighty cents she did not spend on the blue drink stayed in the account, where it waits for the three-dollar juice she cannot afford, which is real food, and now within her greater access.
I was struck by one feature I am not certain you intended. The decision to deny the drink was made in Washington. By the time it reached the store it had become hers — she was the one who said no, out loud, to her son, who is three, and who watched the bottles go back into the cashier’s hand. You have arranged for it to be administered by the mother. The boy will not grow up resenting a policy. He will grow up having watched his mother refuse him. He will never learn the name of the man who sent the gray to the screen. He will only ever know her face.
I do not know what the boy will drink instead. The tap, perhaps, which he distrusts, for reasons I am sure are unscientific and which your department is welcome to correct in him. I know he will remember the gray, and the green that came after, and the small sound the machine made — the same chime it makes for everyone, the chime that does not distinguish between a thing bought and a thing surrendered. You have made many fine distinctions, Mr. Secretary. The machine cannot make that one. It seems a small thing beside the rest.
So I thank you. The nutrition is back at the center. The families have their greater access. And in a state that did as you asked, a three-year-old is learning the first rule of the country he was born into: that there are things you may see and not have, and that the person who tells you which will be made to look like the one who chose it.
With admiration for the completeness of the design,
Josiah Pell
who stood in the line
She has her own account of that checkout. → “The Screen Said No”
https://substack.com/@rossboulton1/note/p-201202143?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2leuaj