“The purpose of a system is what it does.”
Stafford Beer
We’ve all been there: you’re waiting in the checkout line at your local Save money. Live better™ Walmart, or wherever fine groceries are sold, and in front of you is a family of four — all obese if not morbidly so — with a cart chock full of Dr. Thunder (Walmart’s Dr. Pepper knock-off) and Hot Pockets and stuff like that.
“EBT,” they say when the cashier reports their bill.
Then you realize — with a disparate mix of revulsion, empathy, and helplessness — that you have just subsidized their slow-burning suicide and the homicide of their equally fat children.
Related: Autopsy: ‘Miracle’ Weight Loss Drug Kills Fat Nurse
One advocacy group recently attempted to quantify this phenomenon.
Via GoCoCo (emphasis added):
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has come under increasing scrutiny for how its benefits are spent. Critics point out that the program may be "encouraging families to eat highly processed, unhealthy junk food" rather than nourishing them with wholesome options. This concern prompted us to conduct a detailed investigation into the foods eligible for purchase with Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards (which deliver SNAP benefits) at one of the nation’s largest grocery retailers…
Our analysis of more than 13,000 SNAP-EBT eligible products reveals a stark nutritional reality. The vast majority of items that SNAP recipients can buy are highly processed. Notable findings include…
62% of EBT-eligible products studied are ultra-processed foods…
Nearly half (47%) of the products contain artificial flavorings…
8% of products contain additives that are banned in California or in California schools…
Over 160 products contain Red Dye No. 3, which has been recently banned by the FDA.
Of course, one of the biggest reasons this mass-scale human tragedy is allowed to play itself out is the influence of big food lobbyists in Washington (and at the state level) who bribe politicians and policymakers to include ultra-processed foods manufactured by mega-corporations like Nestle, Coca-Cola, et al. in the EBT program.
Often, these lobbyists go as low as weaponizing accusations of racism against anyone who objects.
Related: Diverse Fat Activist Gets Paid to Lie to Children About Nutrition for Corporate Profit
This dilemma could go a long way to being resolved with a handful of policy shifts enacted by new HHS Secretary RFK Jr., some of which he has floated in the past:
- Not a single red cent more for the SNAP program until all ultra-processed foods are removed. Fruits, veggies, meats, eggs, dairy, beans, and possibly whole grains — that’s all that EBT cards should be able to buy.
- A complete overhaul of the USDA food guidance, upon which all governmental nutrition programs are predicated, to emphasize the benefits of whole vs. ultra-processed foods.
- Send every doctor who seeks to qualify as a Medicare or Medicaid provider to re-education focused on nutrition. At virtually every medical school in the United States, students only receive one or two dozen hours of nutrition training in total over four years — criminally insufficient.
- A change in the incentive structure in Medicaid. Currently, the efficacy of medical treatment is measured by how many drugs the doctor puts the patient on, which he or she then obediently takes, rather than on improvements in metrics like body fat percentage or even subjective ones like reported quality of life. This perverse incentive structure obviously benefits the pharmaceutical industry and does nothing to actually improve health outcomes.
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