No Soda For Poors
The current push to eliminate soda from SNAP benefits isn't for anyone's benefit except Big Food and Beverage companies
There’s been a recent flurry of right-wing politicians and influencers calling for soda to be banned for purchase by people who use SNAP benefits, more commonly called “Food Stamps.”
This seems like a clear case of a consumer ripoff concealed as contempt for poor people.
Left-wing influencers say that SNAP recipients, aka poor people, should be allowed to purchase foods and beverages of their choice with their benefits, while right-wingers say that “the taxpayer dollar shouldn’t pay for non-essentials for aid recipients.”
The lone libertarian representative, ultra right-winger Thomas Massie, joined in on the chorus. Libertarians believe in their personal rights above all else. In this case, Massie believes that taxpayers should have a “say” in how recipients spend “their” tax dollars. Ordinarily, one might think that libertarians would say that people should be able to buy anything they want with their money. But Massie apparently doesn’t consider SNAP benefits to belong to the individual recipient, but rather to the “taxpayer.”
I’ve heard this all before. Back in the Reagan era.
For years, students have written papers on the pros and cons of soda purchase, whether larger sodas should be sold as in the case of the New York super-size drink ban, or this argument: should SNAP benefits be able to be used for soda.
The current push to eliminate soda and candy purchases from SNAP benefits is coming from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) initiative.
Kennedy, a rich man, is doubtless keenly aware that while about 7% of SNAP benefits are spent on soda and sugary snacks, the total expenditure on sugary junk foods via this route amounts to about $1 billion a year. Rich leaders in the U.S. appear to count on the fact that the general population doesn’t understand math and is incapable of comprehending even a few facts about our diseased, disastrous food system.
While the estimated value of SNAP purchases of sweetened soda and snacks is about $1 billion a year, the value of U.S. taxpayer dollar subsidies for the production of high-fructose corn syrup and sugar amounts to $4 billion or more every year. Overall, the Federal government subsidizes farm businesses and agriculture to the tune of more than $30 billion a year according to the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.
Banning soda and candy purchases from SNAP benefits won’t change a thing as the big businesses that churn out an endless array of new Mountain Dew flavors and boxes of ultra-sweet syrup for fast food soda machines are already subsidized to the hilt by … what did Massie say again? The taxpayer dollar!
The taxpayer dollar is already spending 30 times as much paying producers all along the industrial food chain to have zero risk in growing more corn that could be consumed in a hundred years, processing it into a slurry, drying it, applying an endless series of chemicals to it, and ending up with an ultra-sweet syrup that’s somehow magically always cheaper than regular sugar.
Which brings us to: who gets SNAP, anyway?
Not I, but over 42 million other people. And a lot of those people work.
WalMart and McDonald’s employees are among the estimated 12.5% of the US population receiving approximately $112 billion a year in SNAP benefits. The WalMart Walton family not only receives revenue from SNAP benefits spent at their stores, they are able to purchase products as cheaply as possible from vendors that are subsidized by tax dollars (we could include the endless plastic bottles made through subsidized petrodollars), they also have their ultra-low wages and lousy benefits subsidized by SNAP benefits and Medicaid.
SNAP benefits average $211 a month per household according to the USDA.
Calls to cut SNAP benefits are cyclical. In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration cut food stamps. In the 1990s, bipartisan “Welfare Reform” led by President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who visited the White House almost as often as Monica Lewinsky) limited cash aid to 5 years over a lifetime, and cut many other forms of aid to poor families. I was asked to go to Washington, D.C. at that time to testify in the “Welfare Reform” process: here’s what happened. Many other cuts were made to public assistance programs in 1996 — for example, legal immigrants were no longer eligible for SNAP benefits.
The bottom line?
It’s hard for me to come to any conclusion other than that what I saw in D.C. in 1993 was real: people who were members of the U.S. Congress and their staff did not think poor people deserved any consideration of any type, and viewed them as subhuman. The woman who put her hand out to stop the three formerly homeless mothers who were about to enter the hearing room with me and said, “Not them — just you,” is still there today. The “leaders” have realized they need to cast more diverse-appearing people in these fake roles while retaining the bureaucratic class that carries out their orders.
Without the customers there’d be no sales or industry at all. Without people shopping at WalMart, there’d be no massive multi-billion Walton fortune.
What a massive, evil clusterfuck it all is.
Why are they pushing soda bans for SNAP — really?
Because it’s not for “people’s health.” Sales of traditional sodas have been falling for years. New beverages are taking their place.
Less than one week ago, PepsiCo bought Poppi (probiotic) soda for $1.95 billion. That same day, I saw a massive Poppi endcap in WalMart. What a lot of people don’t know about probiotic sodas (other than they will give you some serious gas) is that they need to be continuously refrigerated for the probiotics and fiber to retain their nutritional value and effect. They’re stored and sold at WalMart identically to regular soda which doesn’t need continuous refrigeration. They’re nutritionally worthless.
Who would like to place bets to see if these products will be allowed for purchase via SNAP benefits? Or — any other “health” oriented new alternative beverage or snack using the next generation of subsidized agricultural byproducts?
In terms of lurking danger, our lives today are exactly like the Wild West only without horses, nature, or outdoor living.
This nightmare is the product of a significant number of people whose decision-making processes are much worse than the ones that are so heavily demonized among poor people.
Poor people don’t know how to spend their money? They’re fat and spend it all on candy and soda!
Yeah well, somebody living in multiple mansions right now thought it was a great idea to sell water in single-use plastic bottles that are now clogging landfills, streets, killing wildlife, and forming massive mats in the oceans.
I’m old enough to remember drinking fountains.
Profits at the Cost of Nutrition and Planet
19th-Century style single-minded problem solving seems to uniformly morph into entrenched self-interested practices that become nearly impossible to eradicate. This one started in the 1970s: how to bottle and transport sugary soda? Glass breaks and is so expensive! Look how cheap plastic is! Profits through the roof!
People love snacks! Let’s make them as sweet as possible but, oops, that sugar comes from sugar cane and they’re running short on slaves on those cane fields— what’s easy to grow — oh yeah, corn! Seeds for corn? Let’s also make sure the farmers can’t grow their own: we can’t reduce profits for the seed company. This started in the 1970s as well.
These business monoliths force monopolies and ever-increasing prices with farm equipment, though reportedly, John Deere has agreed to allow farmers to work on their own tractors … someday.
Is the massively-subsidized Big Ag monocrop industry even good for the small number of individuals who have so richly benefited from it? There are an estimated 60 years of this style of agriculture left before the soil is exhausted to the point that no more crops can be grown. We’ve seen this scenario in various doomsday movies — it’s not sci-fi though — it’s real.
Most of the modern “new” sodas come in cans, not plastic bottles, due to their ingredients, advertised as prebiotics. Poppi contains agave inulin, a form of indigestible fiber. People have sued Poppi stating that its claims of health are false advertising. Poppi contains 2 grams of inulin fiber; dietary recommendations for fiber are 25 grams a day for women and 30 grams a day for men. An avocado contains 9 grams of fiber, and a sweet potato contains 4 grams. I regularly consume 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day and my diet does not include Poppi.
None of these products should form the basis of a healthy diet.
With the exception of beans, rice, and canned vegetables and fruits, no products in the inner aisles of most supermarkets (or outer aisles at Winn-Dixie) are suitable for feeding anyone; you might even get better nutrition in the pet food aisle (and no, I don’t mean the “Farmer’s Dog” — if you’re going to improve your dog’s diet, cook real food and feed them your dinner — that’s what we do).
The SNAP debate demonizes the poor while continuing degradation of our food system
I could easily feed our family on the average SNAP benefit of $200 a month, but that’s because I know how to cook, have access to a good kitchen, have good refrigeration, and know how to prepare many foods. Fruits and vegetables have skyrocketed in price since 2020, and lean proteins are similarly costly. Planning portion sizes and buying for the week is more challenging all the time. Fortunately, Bruce doesn’t like eggs, which makes them stretch farther.
Every single person who’s promoting the idea that SNAP benefits shouldn’t pay for sodas and candy right now is working directly for all the big companies that reap short-term profits from their short-sighted, “take no prisoners and do as much damage as possible” profit-oriented business practices.
I work with agricultural cooperatives and I’ve yet to encounter any of them who receive any form of USDA subsidy granted to big Ag businesses that have done nothing but put small farmers out of business and gobble up their land for monocropping throughout my entire lifetime. Our society is so fundamentally addicted to cash, short-term ego boosts, and short term profit that while everyone knows regular farmers are usually good people, we’re unwilling to take even the smallest steps to stop the Big Farmers who have created a juggernaut of health, planet, and morale destroying disasters.
SNAP recipients are already buying less soda and candy. The big food purveyors and the individuals in charge of these interlinked systems, from massive cornfields to massive storage and processing facilities, to bottlers and packagers, to WalMart shelves and endcaps, are pivoting to Poppi and “healthy” snacks that are of even poorer food quality and greater unnecessary processing than the sweetened drinks and simple candies they replace.
Whether you receive SNAP benefits or not: don’t buy any of these products. Eat simple, real food for your own health and for the health of the planet. Don’t be fooled by advertisements of “health” or other benefits; we all know with common sense that children’s cereals that are more than half sugar are bad for anyone, and that stuff in a can or plastic bottle — even water — isn’t the best choice of hydration or nourishment.
The government doesn’t need to make a law to tell you to do that, you should do it on your own.
The food problem is an exemplar of how everything works in America. Bolt on 'solutions' at the very end of a grift-laden process to attempt to ameliorate the predictable negative effects, where 'solutions' are mostly marketing and happytalk.
Poors already don't buy much candy and snacks, because they're too expensive for what you get. Getting enough real nutrition from SNAP is enough of a challenge.