this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
64 points (95.7% liked)
Progressive Politics
3591 readers
388 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Who decides which SKUs are healthy or not? Can I buy a birthday cake?
Some breakfast cereals or snack bars are just as loaded with sugar as candy. And I'm sure the ban doesn't include juice either which is not much better than soda. And if the ban is broad enough it might include sugar-free sparkling water.
While soda and candy are really frivolities they're also not a guaranteed cause of health issues. The ban doesn't force people to eat lean protein and vegetables or a well-balanced diet in general so this is mostly a play to make SNAP recipients more miserable. Whether that encourages people to work harder to buy their own junk food or steal junk food I don't think they care.
Or flour, butter, and sugar to make a birthday cake?…
…and if we let them get their hands on unadulterated sugar and butter, who knows what luxuries they could make on their own; hidden from our oversight. Don’t they know they’re poor? Don’t they know their place?
They’re practically making us do this to them…
Should probably ban bottled water, since it's practically free from the faucet.
Seed oil is unhealthy and should be banned. Only tallow fat.
Organic foods are luxury items with standard counterparts.
Dehydrated milk flakes are a better use of money than expensive liquid milk. (That actually used to be a thing!)
Only store brands are allowed, unless there is none available. A designated overseer must be appointed at each place of business.
Eventually, only vouchers will be provided (again) so that specific items can be purchased. To be considered for the list, please apply at FDA.gov/fat cats.
Yeah that's the conflicting part. But also Pepsi and Lays don't seem like a great way to get people fed.
Food is also a part of celebrations and special occasions, not just raw calories in to sustain you. We have enough food to feed people in the US, we don’t need to police how food stamps are spent.
But you're using an exception to circumvent what it's about. Feeding people. It's especially poorer people who enter the vicious cycle of primarily eating easily availible cheap junk food
So go after the companies making the food before it reaches the stores, not the poor people trying to buy food at the store.
But then that wouldn’t let you get your treats, and that’s different, right?
Until we get UBI saddly we should. Theres only so much money for these programs. Anyone who wastes it is then stealing from someone who really needs it.
There’s not an infinite money pot everyone on food stamps gets access to while they’re on it. If you’re given $100 for the month and spend $10 of it on a cake, you don’t get extra to make up for it. You just have to budget the remainder differently. You don’t become less eligible for SNAP because you wanted a cake, and it doesn’t take money from anyone else’s SNAP account. The answer to funding shortfalls is returning the tax rate for the megarich to reasonable levels, not squeezing the poor even harder.
If a person is eligible for food stamps, then it’s paternalistic as hell to cordon off huge swathes of the supermarket from them because it doesn’t match some ideal picture of what you should eat for every single meal—something I would bet 90% of the people in this thread also don’t live up to.
If you’ve never been on food stamps or WIC in a place that polices food choices like that then you genuinely have no idea what a nightmare it makes weekly shopping, because there’s no such thing as a way to implement ‘common sense restrictions’ on what types of foods poor people are allowed to buy without overlooking some dietary need that some people have.
Theres not an infinite pool of money so of course then people should not be wasting it on candy chips and energy drinks. Its not squeezing poor people by not allowing it to be wasted. And i come from a family who used food stamps, and my mother still is so i know. I still bitch at her for wasting it when she has to then get me or my grandfather to buy food for the rest of the month.
I agree completely that snap and wic are needed in the current environment of this god forsaken country. But just giving out 500 dollars a month to spend on anything that isnt hot and fresh doesnt teach people how to spend wisely.
Im not sorry that most people poor and rich are rather stupid, people on government benefits should be restricted on wasting money provided by taxes the same as rich people should be held accountable to pay their fair share.
Consider also: the purpose of SNAP isn’t to ‘fix’ people who are ‘spending wrong.’ It’s to feed people. Thinking the government should enforce the dietary choices of the poor is fucknut crazy.
Cake is not nutrition. I think it should ban all ultra processed Nova class 4 products.
Is butter nutrition? Is flour? Is anything with added sugar automatically ‘not nutrition’?
Allowing poor people to buy the ingredients to make cake but not a cheaper premade cake (or probably a boxed cake mix either under the vibes-based Nova classification system) just makes it so that they have to add even more work to their lives to achieve normalcy for themselves and their kids. Let them buy their kids a birthday cake.
The desire to have total control over every food poor people can buy is nuts. Worry about what you eat. Go into the community and hold free cooking classes if you’re that worried about other people. ‘I’m so worried for you that I’m restricting your choices’ isn’t worry, it’s moralizing.
and its also not like things like this tend to snowball ounce you start no nope never happened