Get the junk food out of SNAP

Economically disadvantaged people deserve good food and good health. But calories and junk food are what many are getting from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps.

Picture a neighborhood retailer—a corner grocery, liquor store, or maybe a smoke shop. Retailers can cash in on SNAP by offering potato chips, sodas, string cheese, and bologna—without ever stocking healthful foods on their shelves. A SNAP participant walking in the front door might hope to find some healthful things to feed his or her family—some dried beans, a bag of rice, or perhaps some apples, bananas, or frozen or canned vegetables. But a retailer who refuses to stock any healthful foods is still paid dollar for dollar for candy, processed cheese, and energy drinks.

{mosads}Along with a group of health experts, I edited a supplement for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published on Jan. 18, 2017. Among our findings was the disturbing fact that children participating in the SNAP program are in worse health, compared with income-eligible nonparticipants. In other words, SNAP has done a great job of stopping hunger. But it has addressed hunger with calories, not with healthful foods.

Many states have proposed new SNAP initiatives that deserve to be tested. For example, we could incentivize healthful foods, so that a SNAP dollar is worth $1.50 for buying vegetables and fruits, and worth only 50 cents when buying candy, soda, meat, or cheese. Or we could harmonize SNAP with the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infant, and Children (WIC), so that candy, soda, and pork chops are excluded, period.  

Incentives have already shown promise. For every dollar spent on fruits and vegetables, the Healthy Incentives Pilot in Massachusetts provided SNAP recipients 30 cents to spend on any SNAP-eligible foods, up to $60. Average fruit and vegetable increased by a quarter cup a day. Not great, but it’s a start. And Stanford University researchers estimated that a ban on SNAP purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages would reduce their consumption by 15 percent.

Now is the time to begin. More than half of SNAP benefits are taken by retailers for meats, sweetened beverages, prepared foods and desserts, cheese, salty snacks, candy, and sugar, while just 23.9 percent of benefits go for fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, beans, seeds, and spices.

In an ideal world SNAP would pay retailers only for healthful food and not a penny for junk. Overnight, corner groceries would stock better choices. Even without refrigeration, they could provide rice and beans, canned vegetables and fruits, pasta, canned soups, and other simple foods. Food deserts would be gone, and the health of our population would rebound.

My research team has proposed what we call the “Healthy Staples Program.” SNAP retailers could sell a broad range of healthful, disease-fighting plant-based foods (with preparation tips and easy meal ideas): grains such as oatmeal, whole-grain bread, pasta, and tortillas; fresh, frozen, or low-sodium canned vegetables; dry or low-sodium canned beans; fresh, frozen, or canned fruit; and even basic multiple vitamins.

WIC made a similar change years ago. In 2009, WIC food packages were modified to exclude sodas, candy, and other snack foods, while providing recipients with additional whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. It’s not perfect, but it shows what can readily be done.

The “Healthy Staples Program” could also save SNAP $26 billion each year. In the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, we outline how the “Healthy Staples Program” would provide SNAP recipients abundant food and complete nutrition while reducing the average monthly benefit used per person from $126.39 to $78.66 each month.

These cost savings can be reinvested into SNAP to expand its benefits or used to renew the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentives (FINI) grant program, which provides SNAP recipients with a cash incentive for fruit and vegetable purchases.

By providing incentives for more fruits and vegetables, restricting junk foods, or modeling SNAP after WIC, the USDA can alleviate hunger and improve the health of Americans.

Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C., is the president of the nonprofit Physicians Committee and a co-editor of a 103-page supplement in the Jan. 18, 2017, edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which proposes solutions to further align the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program with the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.