The Ballooning American Waistline

By Jürgen Fälchle @Adobe Stock

A Terrifying New Threat – State-Sponsored Obesity

Should it come as a surprise that as government welfare has enlarged, so has the girth on Americans? Studies reveal, discloses Allysia Finley in the WSJ, “people on food stamps eat less healthy than other low-income Americans.”

In Key West, where Dick and I have lived for 35 years, our local national chain drugstore has morphed into a kaleidoscope of Chinese plastic pool items, party favors and other junk, beer, chips and cigs. The pick-up line for pharmaceuticals snakes past a wall banked with SNAP-filled coolers. Try to pick up your prescription on your lunch break.  Pharmacies, in pseudo-European style, now close a little before noon ‘til 1 pm. Let’s hope the pharmacist avoids the SNAAP coolers in favor of some old-fashioned omega-6 trans acids found in Mexican corn chips at local eateries. Yes, lunch now becomes sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but that’s food for another day.

Anti-hunger left-wing groups protest and make common cause with the candy and beverage industries. How unfair would it be to lower-income groups if they were barred from using government handouts to buy sugary treats? Hear the bellowing?

Nobody is being punished, reminds Ms. Finley. Kit Kats and Cokes are still available for cash. Perhaps people of all income levels would prefer to eat better, to avoid empty calories. Why else are soda and candy manufacturers nervous, “screaming from the rooftop.” They might lose their gravy train.

The stated purpose of the food stamp program is to support “nutrition.” Are. Skittles nutritious?

In 2008, Democrats deceptively labeled food stamps the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP) to increase public support. But for far too many Americans, food stamps aren’t supplementing earned income. They are supplementing other government programs.

In the U.S., there are more than a dozen “nutrition” programs ,including free school lunches and the WIC program for low-income pregnant women, infants and children.

• The Biden administration even allowed states to spend federal Medicaid dollars on “nutritious” meal deliveries. This seems a tacit admission that food stamps aren’t paying for nutritious foods.
• Studies have proven that more food-stamp money is spent on soda and sweets than fruits, vegetables, eggs, pasta, beans and rice combined, according to a report by the Foundation for Government Accountability.
• Sweetened beverages and candy alone account for 11% of food-stamp spending.
• A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined diet quality of food-stamp beneficiaries and people of similar incomes who didn’t receive the handouts from 2003 to 2014.

Studies show that non-beneficiaries ate better than beneficiaries, and their diets improved more over time. Also shown, working-age adults on food stamps consume more added sugars and refined grains, and less fruit and vegetables, than nonrecipients with similar demographics. Severe hypertension and low levels of “good” cholesterol are often commonplace.

 Women on food stamps have much higher obesity and diabetes rates.

No, this does not prove that food stamps make people fat. But isn’t it plausible that recipients buy more junk when the government gives people more money to spend? (Food stamps, notes Ms. Finley, may also free up more money in household budgets to buy tobacco, alcohol, and other unhealthy products.)

Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare

Think America has a hunger problem? Just visit Disney Land or your local drugstore to see how obese people are. No one looks to be suffering from malnutrition. About 3% of food-stamp beneficiaries are overweight or obese, continues Ms. Finley. The only surprise, from my casual observation, is how low that number is.

More Americans of all income levels die from illnesses caused by overindulgence than by hunger. Yet the government keeps subsidizing more people to eat more junk.

In 2021 the Biden administration boosted allotments by 27% on average based on the rationale that—get this—Americans need to consume more calories because they are fatter. The costs of poor diet are socialized through government and private insurance. Taxpayers pick up the tab via Medicaid, and healthy people have to pay higher insurance premiums.

It is not necessary to work to qualify for most welfare programs. Au contraire, work too much, and you could lose eligibility.

Members of both parties lack the appetite to shrink bloated entitlements. Democrats are protesting even modest trims to Medicaid spending on able-bodied adults.

You would be hard-pressed to blame the government’s $36+ trillion debt on a single program. But like calories, spending does add up over time.

… America would be healthier and more prosperous if Washington went on a diet.