Welcome back, Challengers,

On the average Tuesday, I eat dinner with my singing club, a meal that has always been provided to me freely. Today, I said no to the meal in favor of my challenge meal. This highlighted both my notable findings from yesterday about the food constantly available around me, and that when you are working with the most basic ingredients, you might have to combine ingredients in ways that don’t quite work just to make a meal with sufficient calories. I began to question whether this was due to my ignorance in how to make a budget stretch or if those regularly receiving SNAP benefits also struggled to achieve a nutritional standard.

Unlike many other programs that provide food access to the insecure, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), SNAP doesn’t require meeting nutritional standards for purchase (Long et al., 2014). Instead, the USDA only requires that purchases be food items. Therefore, sodas, candy, and cookies are allowed, but hygiene items and medicines aren’t (Long et al., 2014). Critics of the program have suggested that nutritional regulations would promote public health lower costs of the program (Lane, 1978). However, studies are inconclusive concerning the effect of the program’s policy on the nutritional choices made by recipients (Gregory et al., 2013). Overall, there is little effect of the SNAP program on diet quality.

However, a clear benefit of the SNAP program is seen in the health outcomes of its recipients. In 2018, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Chloe East, studied the effects of food stamps on child health rates and found that young children in households with food stamps had better health outcomes at ages 6–16 than low-income children who did not (East, 2018). Psychological health is also positively correlated to SNAP, as shown by a study conducted by Simone Rambotti which found that receiving SNAP benefits is correlated to lower suicide rates, particularly for men (Rambotti, 2019). The paper predicts that if SNAP increased eligibility by one standard deviation, approximately 31,600 lives would’ve been saved throughout the course of the study period (Rambotti, 2019).

Why is it then that politicians continue to attempt budget cuts for this program? In 2018, the Trump administration proposed cutbacks in food stamps worth over $17 billion in 2019, effectively slashing the average recipients benefits in half, with what they termed the “Blue Apron program” (Dewey, 2018). Instead of providing a certain amount of monetary value that recipients can spend over the course of the month, the program would deliver a box of pre-selected basic food items like milk, juice, pasta, and peanut butter (Dewey, 2018). In this way, the government could save money by purchasing all items at wholesale value, rather than providing the funds for the recipients to purchase retail prices. However, this transition fundamentally ends the limited agency that recipients once had in their own nutrition. As was stated by New York Times op-ed writer Bryce Covert, “under Trump’s plan, the government decides what you get and when you get it” (Dewey, 2018). Particularly interesting, is the coining of this program “Blue Apron”, named after a high-end meal delivery box. How does this hold to the reality of the program: aiming to cut spending on a program that already only provides $1.40 per meal? What is the Trump administration hoping to get across, or gloss over, by giving it this name?

In 2019, Trump again proposed a change to SNAP that would cut benefits from nearly 3,000,000 individuals by limiting states’ abilities to waive the requirement of employment for SNAP benefits (Fessler, 2019). Throughout the years SNAP funds have been consistently in flux, from the 1980s in which much of the eligibility requirements tightened, 1996 with the welfare reform amendment, 2009 to counteract the 2007 recession, and budget cuts again in 2014 (Gritter, 2015). Because it is an area that is constantly debated (and one which affects approximately 40 million Americans), it is vitally important to learn the stances of politicians on this issue before voting, especially in the wake of the 2020 election.  

What do our candidates think? See as they make public announcements about their stances on nutrition here: https://www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/agriculture/nutrition/

SOURCES

Lane, S. (1978). Food distribution and Food Stamp Program effects on food consumption and nutritional “achievement” of low income persons in Kern County, California. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 60(1), 108-116.

Long, M. W., Leung, C. W., Cheung, L. W., Blumenthal, S. J., & Willett, W. C. (2014). Public support for policies to improve the nutritional impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Public health nutrition, 17(1), 219-224.

Gregory, C., Ver Ploeg, M., Andrews, M., & Coleman-Jensen, A. (2013). Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation leads to modest changes in diet quality (No. 1477-2017-3991).

East, C. N. (2018). The effect of food stamps on children’s health: Evidence from immigrants’ changing eligibility. Journal of Human Resources, 0916-8197R2.

Rambotti, S. (2019). Is there a relationship between welfare-state policies and suicide rates? Evidence from the US states, 2000–2015. Social Science & Medicine, 112778.

Dewey, C. (2018). Trump wants to slash food stamps and replace them with a ‘Blue Apron-type program’. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/12/trump-wants-to-slash-food-stamps-and-replace-them-with-a-blue-apron-type-program/

Fessler, P. (July 2019). 3 Million Could Lose Food Stamp Benefits Under Trump Administration Proposal. National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/07/23/744451246/3-million-could-lose-food-stamp-benefits-under-trump-administration-proposal

Gritter, M. (2015). Food Stamps and SNAP: History, Policy and Politics. In The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps and SNAP (pp. 1-22). Palgrave Pivot, New York.