It's not like food choices are always this easy or obvious.
A recent story in the
Washington Post provided a look at the cheap food options affordable on a food stamp budget, and the
health problems and obesity that diet causes. All well and good, but reporter Eli Saslow's big question was "Has the massive growth of a government feeding program solved a problem, or created one?" The chain of thought that got him to that question:
Hidalgo County has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation . . . which has led almost 40 percent of residents to enroll in the food-stamp program . . . which means a widespread reliance on cheap, processed foods . . . which results in rates of diabetes and obesity that double the national average . . . which fuels the country’s highest per-capita spending on health care.
This is some messed-up logic. Seriously messed up. Let's do a thought experiment and take food stamps away from poor people who are currently using them to buy cheap, processed foods. Is there a scenario in which those people buy more expensive, healthier food, having lost the benefits that are currently providing much of their food budgets?
The reason people are relying on cheap, processed foods is not that people's food budgets are coming from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—heaven knows it's not like it's a program requirement that benefits be spent on junk food—it's that they are poor. Maybe they live in food deserts. Maybe they don't have the kitchen facilities to keep or cook fresh foods—one woman portrayed in the story doesn't have a fridge. But whatever you can say about the diets of food stamp recipients, poverty, not food stamps, is the starting point. Take SNAP away and maybe people eat fewer hot Cheetos, but fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats don't magically appear on their plates.
But now the question has been asked, not by the Heritage Foundation or similar but by a major newspaper: Is there evidence that SNAP causes obesity? The short answer is: not if you care about your evidence being good. For a longer answer, let's go below the fold.
The Food Research and Action Center has looked at many studies of SNAP participation and obesity, finding that the most valid ones say no, SNAP participation does not lead to obesity. Among the studies with this finding:
- Based on a study of 772 low-income families from a national sample, food insecure girls participating in the school lunch, school breakfast, or SNAP programs (or all three programs combined) have a lower risk of overweight compared to food insecure girls from non-participating households.
- In a study controlling for food security status, current adult SNAP participants in Massachusetts living in households participating in the program for at least 6 months have a lower body mass index (BMI, an indicator of excess body fat) compared to those participating less than 6 months, suggesting that long-term participation is associated with lower BMI.
- Food insecure adults over 54 years of age participating in SNAP are less likely to be overweight than non-participants, according to a large, nationally representative sample.
- A study set in eight New York City area primary care practices finds that food insecurity is significantly associated with increased BMI in only those women not receiving food assistance (SNAP or WIC), suggesting that food assistance program participation plays a protective role against obesity among food insecure women.
That's just for starters. To be sure, some studies do allege a connection, but the Food Research and Action Center points out that most of those don't control for food insecurity, which is kind of a big deal when you're talking about poverty and food assistance. Moreover, for some reason the association between SNAP participation and obesity seems to only affect adult women, which might just be related to the
fact that for women, the lower the income group, the higher the obesity rate, something not true of men.
Isn't it funny how there are all these big social problems with a single common thread—poverty—and yet when policymakers and pundits talk about how to address obesity or poor educational outcomes, the discussions tend not to center around that common thread, that root cause. Getting serious about reducing poverty—not trying to patch some of its symptoms, but actually reducing it—would have the biggest impact, but it would mean reducing inequality, reducing the power and wealth of those at the top. That's clearly not an acceptable outcome for those at the top, so instead even many Democrats never get past trying to slap band-aids on different areas of a much bigger wound, all the while Republicans are running around pulling the band-aids off and doing their best to make the underlying problem worse.