Why the Trump administrations new SNAP proposal is hard to swallow

[babylonsister]

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Why the Trump administration’s new SNAP proposal is hard to swallow
By Devra First
Globe Staff February 20, 2018


Sometimes cruelty comes in a can.

snip//

You’ve probably read about this proposal, because it was met with swift outrage. Now here is what it would look like in practice:

Let’s say I have $90 in benefits. I spend the first half as I would under the current SNAP system, where funds are delivered to an EBT card. At my local Star Market, I drop $43.88, looking for sales and thinking about meal planning as I go.

I buy a whole chicken, roast it, and serve it with green beans and oven fries made from sweet potatoes and russets. The leftover chicken gets tossed with penne, broccoli, and garlic butter. The carcass goes into a soup pot for a long simmer with onion, garlic, carrots, and celery; I add rice, eggs, and lemon juice to make avgolemono. Pinto beans cooked with bacon pair with cornbread and sauteed Swiss chard. The leftover cornbread can be toasted to eat with bacon and eggs for breakfast. The leftover beans go over rice; the leftover rice gets fried with leftover bits of vegetables, meat, and eggs. A 2½-pound container of pre-cut cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple, and watermelon keeps us in fresh fruit for a few days.

Now it’s time to spend the second half, on the kind of food I’d receive in an America’s Harvest Box. I spend $41 on canned, boxed, shelf-stable ingredients.

I make pasta with jarred sauce, along with canned green beans and corn. We have cereal with shelf-stable milk. Canned pinto beans still go over rice, but I don’t have bacon, onions, garlic, carrots, and celery to cook them with. There is peanut butter but no bread. I love canned sardines, but no one else in my family does; on the other hand, my son is delighted with the sugary fruit cocktail and mandarin oranges.

In terms of satisfaction and nutrition, there is no contest. This may be food, but it is extremely difficult to turn into meals.

It is also depressing as hell. I can’t control my family’s nutritional intake. The things we don’t like go to waste. I can’t cook what I want, and trying to make something that will suffice feels like an exercise in hopelessness. (This comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever been on government assistance. I am not a SNAP recipient. I’ve been fortunate in my circumstances. And as for most people in this country, that could change with one or two strokes of bad luck.)

The outrage is warranted. This proposal denies choice to users. It makes it impossible to accommodate for dietary or cultural needs, never mind taste preferences. It seems designed for waste, designed not to nourish people but to remind them they need assistance, to tell them they ought to be grateful for what they get. Transporting heavy packages of canned goods — the systems for which would be designed by the states — is inefficient and expensive.

“The sheer logistics of it would be a mess,” says Ashley Stanley, founder and executive director of Lovin’ Spoonfuls. Although the nonprofit rescues and distributes perishable, rather than shelf-stable, food, the basic concepts are the same: “My entire business depends on clean, consistent, reliable logistics that guarantee food makes it into the hands of people that need it,” she says. “Are we talking about shipping cans of heavy food? And then what — we leave it at people’s doors? It’s imbecilic. When you’re talking about distribution, it’s a multi-tentacled endeavor. There’s no chain of command, no accountability.”

Then there’s this. The plan isn’t even designed to pass. It’s designed to send a message: that the 42 million people who participate in SNAP ought to be ashamed of themselves, even though more than two-thirds of recipients are children, seniors, or people with disabilities, even though there is a work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents.

more...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2018/02/19/taking-trump-administration-new-snap-proposal-for-test-drive/gSITN3SxlSuet7xuaQq5UN/story.html?event=event25

[GreenEyedLefty]

1. I didn't mean to be mean, but I trolled the shit out of someone who bragged about...

... spending only $650 per month on groceries for a family of 4, including pets. She bragged as a way of saying you can very easily live on SNAP benefits! See, people bandy amounts like $650 around like it's a lot of money for food. It's not. It's roughly $5 per day, per family member.

I broke that shit down, meal by meal. Not only is it nearly impossible to have an average nutritious dinner for a family of 4, let alone breakfast or lunch, there isn't much room for any kind of variety and zero extras - no treats, no snacks. And forget about dining out anywhere.

Basically I called her out as a god damned liar. When I was done, she left the forum.

[Vinca]

2. I didn't see that, but good for you. If you want to eat nutritious, FRESH food it's not cheap.

The thought of packing a box with high sugar, high sodium, high calorie garbage and sending it to someone is obscene.

[GreenEyedLefty]

3. It wasn't here at DU. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I'm not a trollish person, but sometimes people deserve a good roasting.