SNAP Benefits and Restrictions on Soda, Candy, and Energy Drinks

0:00Hi, Dr. Zorba Pastry here with a rapid update, and this actually has to do with the things that are going on in Washington with the Maha Make America Healthy Program again, a particular article that was recently in the Journal of the AMA really interested me. So first of all, good food. We know that good nutritious food is important for all of us. And we can all agree that sugary drinks, Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, they're basically liquid twinkies. A typical 12 ounce bottle of any soft drink has 12 teaspoons of sugar or 12 sugar cubes. And this, the basically drinking all the soft drinks in America has led to obesity. And I think it's important to talk about that. Now if you look at the SNAP program, that is the supplemental nutrition assistance program also called food stamps. It turns out that SNAP recipients can buy soda, soft drinks, candy, and energy drinks.

1:07Now the particular opinion piece in JAMA was really gave me pause to think. So SNAP households spend roughly 23% more than non-SNAP households on packaged foods and beverages. Okay. In other words, they tend to spend more on sugary drinks and candy. This is a question I think that we have to look at. If we look at the amount of spending that goes in a SNAP, which is roughly from last year, $336 billion of spending, sweet beverages, co-locke, Mountain Dew, and everything, actually correspond to 9.3% of the SNAP expenditures. That means $31 billion of SNAP is going to the soft drink industry, okay? This turns out to be 20 to 25% of U.S. revenues for Coke and Pepsi. In other words, 25% of what Coke and Pepsi make in America actually comes out of SNAP benefits. Now I kind of found this astounding in some ways.

2:08Now if we remove these drinks from SNAP, the idea is that we shouldn't do it because it imposes a stigma on people who want to buy these drinks. They can't buy them and they would like to buy them and like to have them. So it turns out that 18 states have asked for a federal waiver to actually remove these soft drinks, energy drinks, and so on from SNAP. Good for them. I think this is a good idea. I think all of us should drink fewer soft drinks, fewer twinkies, fewer prepackaged foods that have high calories and don't have very much nutrition in them. And I'm going to talk about for just a second this whole moral issue. But let me state for a minute, the states that are actually removing this from their SNAP benefits. Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Hawaii, and Colorado.

3:12So those are the states that asked for an exemption from the federal government to remove these empty calories from their SNAP benefits. So there's an argument here. The argument here has something called healthism, which is a term that was coined in the 1980s that if you don't take care of your health, it's a moral failure. So it's really a spurious argument. A lot of people don't take care of their health for a whole bunch of reasons. And I don't think we should use morality as a reason not to actually encourage good eating. I think it's a good idea to take the empty calories out of the SNAP program because I think then people will be encouraged, maybe forced, to actually spend the SNAP money on good eating. This is Dr. Zorba Pastor. Stay well.