this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Lifelong leftist, two-time Bernie voter, and I think it's good. Can't believe it's even controversial. Only in America is "you probably shouldn't eat candy" considered a point of cruelty.
Have you ever used WIC or SNAP in a red state? Because it’s a fucking nightmare to figure out what’s included or excluded. You can have juice, but only certain brands (sugar content irrelevant). Same for yogurt and soy milk but not regular milk, any brand is fine for that. Oh, and only certain brands of whole wheat bread. Doesn’t matter if there’s healthier options that aren’t on the list, or if you can’t eat those things. My siblings literally have to shop with a printout of what brands are okay to get.
Fucking with what food people can spend their food stamps on to match what people think is the most ‘moral’ way to eat doesn’t improve anyone’s life, it just makes shit harder and worse to deal with.
What you're describing is an effect of the exact corporate lobbying I said we need to get rid of. Set up a clear set of standards across a few types of food defined by near-universally agreed upon science, stop carving out exemptions for big corporate donors and punishing small brands that can't pay off Congress. If you can't meet certain standards of nutrition, you're out. Sorry Little Debbie, but you've got to play in the free market now. Good luck! :-)
There's no reason to bring morality into this when it's just pure logic that almost every other Western country has come to.
It's a net negative for everyone the more of this junk we eat.
We shouldn't encourage it's consumption (we are here).
We should tax unhealthy items that put a strain on our social systems.
Unhealthy items should be heavily regulated and come with a warning to the public of their health risks. (See: Mexico)
Very unhealthy items allowed today should be banned. (See: The EU's food regulation)
Do you agree with this? Which part of a junk "food" ban upsets you? Would you support stronger national regulation, maybe a ban? Should SNAP cover raw milk? Should ObamaCare pay for ivermectin treatments? Would you cry if Mountain Dew Red Dye 40 got legislated out of grocery stores? I'm genuinely curious.Is it the fact that it just disqualifies them from SNAP eligibility? People are still more then welcome to buy them privately with their own money, but SNAP is a social support system, a very strained and underfunded one at that. There is zero support to be gained from a Twinkie.
Is that a ‘no, I’ve never used SNAP or WIC in a red state’? The part that upsets me is you’re exclusively targeting poor people by trying to control what they can spend their food stamps on. Deciding that certain foods are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ regardless of context is moralizing, even if you don’t call it that. There isn’t any single food that is fine to eat exclusively, and there isn’t any single grocery store food that will kill you if you eat it once. It is fine to eat birthday cake at a birthday party, and anyone that doesn’t want poor people to be able to use food stamps on that is, frankly, a grinch. Food isn’t solely about nutrition, it’s also a part of community and a sense of belonging.
Nutrition is complicated, and anyone acting like there are one size fits all solutions is a scam artist. If you want people to spend their food stamp money on more fruit, veg, and whole grains, then the pressure needs to be on the companies making these foods, not the poor people buying them.
So tax the fucking rich. This is the fakest “leftist” shit I’ve read in my life. You don’t fix a food funding problem by micromanaging the poor.
Food stamps have been regulated since day fucking uno dude. Where were you a year ago? Demanding Congress let you use WIC to buy a Big Mac? Or SNAP for a bottle of Cognac? This is a hill to die on several miles away from the battlefield if you're this worked up over plastic-wrapped Fudge Rounds being excluded.
Good thing it isn't SFAP or that would be a convincing argument :-)
Sure it is, but at no point on that chart is "Twinkie" plotted. Some people need more iron in their diet, eat spinach, others need vitamin C, have an orange. But no one needs a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. We're talking about excluding nutritionally-insignificant trash from a nutrition assistance program. I like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but I'm not including clips of it in my video lecture on depictions of Lustmord in Weimar art.
I agree. So stop subsidizing them through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Do you think exempting Swiss Rolls will have a net-negative impact on Hostess revenue? I do.
Tax the rich, totally, and maybe in 2028 we can start that. But I don't want to wait to fix SNAP and you play with the hand you're dealt. In a world where Trump is president and we can have A) Rampant wealth inequality, the guttingn of social safety systems, and Little Debbie gets unlimited free money from the government, or B) rampant wealth inequality, the gutting of social safety systems, but corporations have less opportunity to feed disadvantaged people poison, folk feel some pressure to make healthier purchases at the grocery store, and the SNAP budget can be put towards even healthier options instead of medically-condemned, politically-advantageous hyperprocessed snacks, I'm going with the latter.
Where I live you can spend them on any food that isn’t hot. Sorry about your shithole state.
You actually can use SNAP to buy a Big Mac if you meet certain conditions, which makes sense if you spend five fucking seconds to think about how food stamps are also issued to people without kitchens or even homes. For some people the options really are Big Mac or nothing.
So you want to cooperate with Republicans to restrict what poor people can use food stamps on, and somehow have deluded yourself into believing this is leftist? lmao
Everything you talk about wanting to implement costs money. Who’s analyzing every single food item that comes out on the market and certifying it? Who’s paying for that? How are small businesses going to afford it for every food item they produce? Because that’s a great way to ensure only huge corporations get any money from WIC and food stamps.
The disgust you have for the poor is dripping off every word you type, and it’s gross. If you can’t deal with poor people feeding themselves the ‘wrong’ foods with their food stamps, that’s a personal issue you need to cope with. Especially considering you’ve never even used food stamps in a red state (silence is admission). Try listening to people on food stamps who have dealt with this instead of barging in and declaring you know how to fix their lives better than they do.
You've went off the plot here. I'll bring us back to base: What's the "N" in SNAP stand for? One word answers only.
Give me your proposal for taxpayer-funded Whoppers. But don't shit up my nutrition (oops, I gave away the answer) program to pay for it. It really is that simple.
L.
MAO, even
Then take it away from rich people too…
Let's do it. Shit is poison and I'd love to see it banned across the board like every other developed country, but the US government has neither the infrastructure nor the independent power to do something like that.
Amazingly people (not literally) rioted in Seattle over a soda tax until the city made it go away. I can't wrap my brain around that one.
Americans will do anything before they'll put ice in a cup at home and drink water
or maybe make "healthy" food less artificially expensive? No because that would require actually restructuring society against the rulers you say.
I get a bag of baby carrots for $0.69 from Aldi and munch on it for two days. A bag of Lay's is 10x that and 90% air.
The whole point of foodstamps is to make sure that you have the basics and can eat. When i see people blowing it on nothing but soda and candy it's like why do you even have them.
Foodstamps are for food, use your own money on the junk instead of the other way around seems simple enough to me. I say that as someone who grew up multiple times homeless family living in the car and had foodstamps most of the time. Spending it on non essentials is stupid
Agreed entirely. Ask someone opposed to these policies (restrictions like this are the standard in almost every other socialist country BTW) what the "N" in SNAP means.
If you consider SNAP/Food Stamps/Nutritional support as a form of social investment, meaning that we all turn out ahead in the long run when people aren't starving, how can you even think that candy, ultra-processed junk foods, soda, etc. is appropriate? Things that have no nutritional value whatsoever and are unanimously condemned by medical experts for having a net-negative impact on a person's health? There is nothing to be gained whatsoever in consuming these types of things, neither individually nor as a culture.
The people on SNAP programs make up some of the country's most disadvantaged and under educated. The junk food mega corporations have lobbied for decades to keep their poison SNAP-eligible for no reason other than profiteering and exploitation. There is zero gain.
SCAP next?
SOGAP after that?
Hell, why don't we skip the wait and just legislate SBTTHAP (Supplemental Bullet to the Head Assistance Program) today.
You guys are REALLY going all in on ignoring the "and other foods" part. Since they're not all listed in the article, who's to say that the kakistocratic governments of the five states didn't also ban nutritionally valid foods that they disapprove of for conspiracy theory and/or policy reasons?
Besides, there's many so-called food deserts in those states: areas where fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce if not completely unavailable. Banning everything else effectively amounts to starving the people forced bt poverty to live in any of those areas.
This isn't about helping poor people eat healthier. It's about controlling what they can and cannot buy while paying less money to keep them alive.
What does the "N" in SNAP stand for?
Nutrition. I already adressed that.
You have to make up hypothetical scenarios to be upset about then. "What if they do this other thing!?!?" Then I'll be upset about it. But the conversation between me and the other guy was about ultra-processed, nutritionally-irrelevant, health-adverse snacks (I don't even call them food) from being excluded from SNAP benefits.
Yes or no, do you think they should be included?
There's nothing hypothetical about food deserts. They DO exist and the people living there ARE disproportionately on SNAP and/or similar programs and unable to move away due to poverty
Or pretend that it isn't real, apparently 🙄
Which is pretty myopic considering that there's no proof that those are the only ones banned.
Given that they're the least bad option available to some people, making the alternative to not eat at all, yes.
While healthy food is better than unhealthy food, unhealthy food is better than no food at all.
My hypothetical comment was about your saying "who’s to say that the kakistocratic governments of the five states didn’t also ban nutritionally valid foods that they disapprove of for conspiracy theory and/or policy reasons?"
Food deserts exist, of course they do, but the garbage I'm in favor of exempting from SNAP isn't a replacement for food, either. If you told me you were in the desert and dying of dehydration, me bringing you a Pilot Precise V5 RT Rolling Ball pen wouldn't quench your thirst, would it?
Semantics. Maybe not the only things banned, but banned nonetheless. That's worth celebrating.
Show me ONE single real location where the ONLY option is between a pack of Hostess cakes and death. Just one. The human body cannot survive indefinitely on Fudge Rounds and Dr. Pepper, these people are getting nutrition from somewhere. Identify it, isolate it, encourage it, and remove addicting, big-money distractions.
Moreso, the way to combat food deserts is to stop encouraging them by telling junk snack dealers they can make infinite money selling Twinkies to the government on repeat. Even better, redistribute SNAP's Twinkie fund to subsidize grocers in the food deserts.