“Right now, a congressional arm-wrestling match is pitting those who want to preserve funding for SNAP against those who want to gut it,” Moby wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, adding that while SNAP really does help people in need, “it also puts a lot of unhealthful food on America’s plate.” The music star continued, “Its costs are huge, as are the added costs of treating diabetes, hypertension and other illnesses that poor eating habits cause.”
Truthfully, this argument seems like a rational solution to both health problems in the United States and wasteful spending within our welfare system. If welfare recipients are going to be getting money from the federal government (aka the American taxpayers), then it only makes sense that the money should be solely for healthy food instead of candy bars and chocolate cake. But like with most other rational solutions that have been proposed to solve the problems America faces, the liberals are standing in the way.
Indeed, Moby faced a substantial amount of backlash after writing his piece for the Wall Street Journal. Liberal feminist and senior staff writer at Upworthy.com Parker Molloy took to Twitter and wrote, “Things Moby’s op-ed doesn’t address: 1, food deserts, 2, the fact that healthy food can be expensive, 3, the fact that some families on SNAP might not have the time/equipment to prepare healthy foods.” Another liberal blogger with the Twitter username “jes skolnik / texas calboy” wrote, “dear moby this is a bad and classist opinion other people’s bodies are none of yr business.”
Regarding Parker Molloy’s comment that healthy food can be expensive and that some families might not have time to prepare healthy food, here’s an idea that could enrage leftists even more than Moby’s comments in the Wall Street Journal: How about some of these welfare recipients find work so that they can more easily afford healthier foods? The idea that the American taxpayers have to subsidize bad eating habits just because buying healthy food would be mildly inconvenient to welfare recipients is absurd. (Related: In a shocking interview, a welfare recipient admitted to sitting at home, smoking weed and waiting for government money.)
Past research has shown that an enormous amount of welfare money is being spent on sweets and non-essential food products. According to a report published by the United States Department of Agriculture, Americans use food stamps to buy over $600 million worth of “sweetened beverages,” in addition to hundreds of millions more of sugary snacks and unhealthy foods.
Specifically, food stamps worth roughly $1.3 billion were spent on “sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar,” which accounted for about one-fifth of every dollar spent on food items purchased by 26.5 million households in the year 2011, according to the report. (Related: Children of welfare recipients are more likely to become dependent on government handouts.)
The main problem with this is that, obviously, the excessive consumption of sugary foods and drinks leads to poor health, and when welfare recipients experience a decline in health, then they rely on the American taxpayers again for medical expenses. Contrary to what the liberals tend to believe, our country’s welfare system should strive to make people more self-sufficient in the long run, not less. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to reform the entire welfare system, but a good starting point would be to require that welfare money is used solely for healthy food products.
Find more news on healthy food choices at Food.news.
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