This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/wisconsin-should-prohibit-purchase-of-candy-and-soft-drinks-with-foodshare/

SNAP is a larded, sugary mess

State Sen. Chris Kapenga and Rep. Clint Moses are seeking support for legislation that would prohibit Wisconsin’s 700,000 FoodShare recipients from buying Snickers bars and Mountain Dew — an excellent idea that has long been opposed by big spenders and junk food lovers throwing their weight around.

FoodShare is Wisconsin’s name for a federally funded and state-administered program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — a misnomer if ever there was one.  The number one so-called “nutritional item” purchased by recipients is soda, the Wisconsin legislators point out in a memo seeking other sponsors.

Nationally, they say, recipients spend more on the purchase of sweetened beverages, desserts and candy than on fruits and vegetables. More than one in three Wisconsinites struggle with obesity, in the meantime, and one in six has diabetes or pre-diabetes.

It is true everyone should have a right to eat what they want — but only if they’re paying for it with their own money. A disabled doctor using FoodShare pointed that out to me a couple years ago.

“Our family recently started receiving SNAP benefits,” wrote the doctor, whom I also talked to briefly on the phone. “I had read the information prior to applying about how SNAP helped families to get ‘healthy’ foods.  What a joke. I assumed that I would be able to get fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy — actually healthy foods — similar to what is allowed on WIC,” the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

“Sure, I can get those, but I can also get Monster, Diet Pepsi, Hershey’s Miniatures, Doritos and Oreos.”

“If the government is going to forcefully take money from my friends and neighbors in taxes, I shouldn’t be able to turn around and spend that money on Mountain Dew and Ben and Jerry’s,” wrote the doctor, who later reiterated on the phone that she just doesn’t see the SNAP benefit as her own money.

As I wrote at the time, I wish there were more North Woods doctors around. When you take government money, no matter how much you need it, you should expect to lose freedom — and, if you’re not careful, maybe your health as well.

Sixty to 70 percent of SNAP recipients between the ages of 50 and 64 have had a diet-related disease such as diabetes or heart disease or hypertension — higher numbers than are found among similarly aged non-recipients, according to research Dr. Angela Rachidi conducted along with Thomas O’Rourke, her colleague at the American Enterprise Institute.

Rachidi is both a senior fellow at AEI and a visiting fellow here at the Badger Institute.

“Although obesity plagues U.S. adults of all socioeconomic statuses, SNAP adults were (also) much more likely to be obese than were low-income non-recipients and high-income non-recipients, suggesting again there is something uniquely substandard about the health status of adults receiving SNAP,” the AEI paper concluded.

Kapenga and Moses’ legislation would require the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to request a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prohibit purchases of candy and soft drinks here in Wisconsin.

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Oklahoma) have introduced legislation at the federal level, the Healthy SNAP Act, to exclude soft drinks, candy, ice cream, and prepared desserts from SNAP. But opponents have stifled such moves in the past.

Requesting a waiver here in Wisconsin is likely the quicker path.

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute.

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