Wayne in Maine wrote:
Ask Valerie how often she sees people buy fresh fruit and seeds with their SNAP benefits.
The people I've known that use SNAP use it that way. The farmers' market vendors at my market who went through the hoops to be able to accept SNAP got this business. I don't think it helpful to stereotype the poor.
Very, very little of SNAP goes to fresh produce.
It’s quite helpful to generalise about what the majority of SNAP customers use their SNAP credits buy.
I was listening to this topic come up on Christian radio this morning- and so Christians were asked to call in to say whether, from a Christian/Biblical point of view, this is a 'good' idea- It seemed like almost everyone thought it was a good idea-
why?
Limit abuse (there was a variety of noted abuses)
Encourage people to eat healthier, and thereby possibly preventing health issues from making unhealthy choices- health issues are costly
Reasons they were against it-
People that have food allergies- what would they do? Or on gluten free diets-
Foods delivered that are disliked by the receivers would probably go to waste-
Taking away the ability/freedom for people to make choices
One thing that was brought up by someone who did childcare in a poor area- and she made a good point- many of the poor live in areas where they can't even get to regular grocery stores (perhaps don't even own cars) so they are forced to shop and local convenience markets- others seemed to agree & said they forgot about this- I think they referred to them as "desert areas" not desert as in weather, but as in isolation- being not to far from Cleveland & Akron I can imagine every state has enough of these poor areas where that would be the case- I don't know- there needs to be a lot to consider in all of this, certainly not a simple undertaking-
I think it's great that there are vendors in Farmers Market that Jim brought up, that go through the hoops to receive SNAP-
We live in a part of the country where we can only have a Farmers Market during the warm months-
Josh wrote:Very, very little of SNAP goes to fresh produce.
It’s quite helpful to generalise about what the majority of SNAP customers use their SNAP credits buy.
Do you have the statistics on this?
No, I don’t carry around an armload of statistics on this.
I do have an anecdote from when a farmers market established itself in an area of Cleveland where virtually every household had SNAP.
After jumping through hoops to accept SNAP, vendors found out they had to have a minimum volume on the SNAP card payment machines. (Similar to a credit card.) Volume was pretty low, and most the customers who wanted fresh produce came from 10 miles away and didn’t have SNAP. Sometimes a vendor would go a whole day with not a single SNAP transaction, but plenty of cash (plus credit card weilding customers wondering what the card machine is for if they can’t use it).
So the vendors got together and figured out a few extra items to sell, basically prepackaged (and expensive) stuff. Well those were all hot sellers and got their volume past the minimums they needed.
It also compares their spending to non-SNAP households, so it's a very useful summary. Looks like vegetables are the #3 item for SNAP spending, but sweetened beverages are #2. Banning pop sounds like a great idea. Beyond that, spending is less different than I would have thought, SNAP households do not spend more money on candy, for instance.
About 40 cents of every food purchase dollar was spent on basic items like meat, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread.
Another 20 cents was spent on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.
The remaining 40 cents was spent on a variety of items such as cereal, prepared foods, other dairy products, rice, beans, and other cooking ingredients.
The top 10 summary categories (Table 1) and top 7 commodities by expenditure were the same for SNAP and non-SNAP households, although ranked in slightly different orders.
Last edited by Bootstrap on Wed Feb 14, 2018 9:24 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
mike wrote:An interesting twist proposed on the SNAP program in Trump's proposed budget. A portion of SNAP benefits would be direct delivery of a parcel of staple food products.
Interesting that the picture at the start of the article shows someone shopping for avocados. The new program wouldn't ship fresh fruits or vegetables. It would cut back money people could have used to buy them. I'm guessing most SNAP benefits aren't spent on avocados ... I wonder why they chose this particular picture?
Probably the first colorful stock photo that popped up. Or just maybe it is more calculated than that.
Why wouldn't they have used this one?
Because it is just as true that the new program cuts back money people could use to buy candy, junk and luxury foods. Right?
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Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily. -Heb. 13:3
Valerie wrote:One thing that was brought up by someone who did childcare in a poor area- and she made a good point- many of the poor live in areas where they can't even get to regular grocery stores (perhaps don't even own cars) so they are forced to shop and local convenience markets- others seemed to agree & said they forgot about this- I think they referred to them as "desert areas" not desert as in weather, but as in isolation- being not to far from Cleveland & Akron I can imagine every state has enough of these poor areas where that would be the case- I don't know- there needs to be a lot to consider in all of this, certainly not a simple undertaking-
That's a good point. And it especially affects access to fruit and vegetables, the shelf-stable stuff is easy to find in these areas, though the prices are marked up way too high.
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Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
Probably the most irritating thing to me personally about SNAP was when I was dating a girl who was recently unemployed, as she worked for political campaigns and the election was over. She was looking for a job but hadn’t found one yet and was low on both money and food.
She had a bit of pride in not accepting government assistance, but I convinced her as an employee of the Democratic party she should feel no shame about participating in government assistance that both of us supported as part of a vision for a liberal-progressive society. So she went and applied, which has to be done at a county level office.
Well the government worker told her “appointments only”. So she went home and called in. The person played phone tag for a week, and then finally got her an interview. The person told her “A nice girl with a college education like you doesn’t need food stamps” and then implied she also did not need food stamps because of her race.
Demoralised, she gave up.
I went grocery shopping with her (and also learnt from her how to shop a lot cheaper). She kept looking for a job and found one in two weeks.
So the social aspect of SNAP needs to be considered too. A lot of people could use help putting food on the table but SNAP won’t help them. When they see SNAP customers buying luxury items and unhealthy junk food, it breeds resentment in society and divides us instead of uniting us around a common goal of helping the needy.
