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an essay argumeny on food stamps
unitedstates food stamp program in the united states
an essay argumeny on food stamps
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As the great nation we claim to be we must help one another especially in times of need, unfortunately this idea is not always shared by everyone, leading to issues such as the Food Stamp Program’s reduction of benefits to those who need them the most. In my paper, I will discuss how the Food Stamp Program was born along with the intentions and effects of its existence. In addition, I will reflect on the nation’s impact as a result to the budget cuts of the program and how this change has affected their ability to purchase food. Lastly, I will discuss the pros and cons of the food stamps program such as the correlations seen on many studies linking obesity to attribute as a result of participation along with the crucial difference food stamp benefits make for the struggling families in America.
According to Elsevier’s Journal of “Health & Place” The current Food Stamp Program began with the federal Food Stamp Act of 1964, although smaller variations of the program have existed since 1933. (Nathaniel L.DeBono n, 2012, p. 747) The program was created in an attempt to end hunger by helping families who were struggling to make hands meat so they will be able to afford groceries and utilize their income for other household expenses such as rent, transportation and clothing. In order to be eligible for the program certain criteria must be meet such as; individual’s household assets of less than $2000, gross household income below 130% of federal poverty line, immigration status, and employment status verification. According to the new guidelines of 2014 a family of four can receive a maximum monthly allotment of $632 food stamps. (USDA United States Department of Agriculture) Technology advancements have made the application process...
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...References
Jonathan D. Shenkin, M. F. (2010). Using the food stamp program and other methods to promote Healthy Diets for low income consumers. American Journal of Public Health , 1562-1564.
Nathaniel L.DeBono n, N.-F. (2012). Does the Food Stamp Program cause obesity? A realist review and a call for place-based research. Health &Place , 747-756.
Nixon, R. (2013, 09 18). Anti-Hunger Advocates Put pressure on Lawmakers Over Food Stamp Bill. The New York Times , pp. 1-3.
Severson, K., & Hu, W. (2013, 11 07). Cut in Food Stamps Forces Hard Choices on Poor. New York Times , pp. 1-4.
Tavernise, S. (2014, 01 06). Study Ties Diabetic Crisis to Dip in Food Budgets. New York Times , pp. 1-2.
USDA United States Department of Agriculture. (n.d.). Retrieved 01 06, 2014, from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): http://usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome
According to Dolgoff and Feldstein (2003), “the needs and goals of the Food Stamp Program are to alleviate hunger and malnutrition by enabling low-income households to buy a nutritious adequate diet” (p. 132). The program also improved the market for local merchants to produce food for eligible low-income households and other agencies such as the School Lunch Program which safeguard the health and wel...
The United States is one of the richest nations in the world and food is plentiful; fifty million people should not experience food insecurity. The problem is that people who live in poverty do not have access to enough food. Policies governing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program need to be changed. The policies cannot be relaxed to the extent that everyone tries to get assistance, but they should be reasonable enough for a family provider to qualify for food stamps and hold a job which pays him enough to sustain a family. Legislators need to look at increase funding for programs like the National School Lunch Program in a manner in which NSLP does not have to compete with funding for budget items that have major lobbyists’ support. Funds to feed hungry children should not be a political budget item. The allocation of subsidies to farmers should also be revisited. Eighty-four percent of subsidies goes to commodity crops and only one percent goes to growers of fruits and vegetables. Even if they had the money to buy food, people living in poverty could not buy the healthier fruits and vegetables; they are too expensive. “If you only have a few dollars to eat, in other words, processed foods will fill you up far cheaper than fruits and vegetables,” (Horn par.12). The unhealthy diets are
Sheffield, Rachel, and T. Elliot Gaiser. "Food Stamps Don't Stimulate Economic Growth." The Foundry Conservative Policy News from the Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Pan, L., Sherry, B., Njai, R., & Blanck, H. M. (2012). Food Insecurity Is Associated with Obesity among US Adults in 12 States. Journal Of The Academy Of Nutrition & Dietetics, 112(9), 1403-1409. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2012.06.011
In 1939, at the end of the Great Depression, is when the Food Stamp Plan was established. It was part of the New Deal that was put in place by President Roosevelt. It was made for low-income families who couldn’t afford essential foods. Participants in the program bought orange stamps which bought household items such as starch, soap, and matches. For every one dollar spent in orange stamps, fifty cents of blue stamps were given back. These stamps would buy the surplus foods such as flour, eggs, cornmeal, and other healthy foods. The program ended in 1943 as World War 2 came to an end, boosting the economy, leaving less in poverty. In 1961, John F Kennedy re-introduced the Food Stamp Program. This program required participants to still purchase food stamps, but eliminated the special food stamps that were needed to buy the extra items, similar to how the program works in the modern day. Today, research shows that 9.25% of food stamps are spent on soft drinks alone. The recipients of food stamps are using them for the wrong purpose.
Throughout the video series “The Weight of the Nation” obesity is addressed several times, including how it as a disease has affected our economy for the worse. Although obesity has not drastically affected the states with higher income, those who live in states with lower income tend to be more negatively affected. In the first part of the video series, there was a study done by researchers in Tennessee proving that people with lower incomes are more negatively affected and prone to the disease of obesity. “If we don’t take on strategies that affect how the low income community is dealing with the obesity epidemic, we’re going to see this phenomenon across our society in a relatively short period of time.”
Kennedy reestablished the Food Stamp Program in 1961 but instead of having stamps for surplus foods Kennedy eliminated this option for citizens. “Major revisions were made to the program in the Food Stamp Act of 1977, including the elimination of the requirement that participants purchase the stamps” (Snap to Health). During the time Ronald Regan was president, the Food Stamps Program received budget cuts because of the increase in number of hungry people in America. “Some funding was restored to the Food Stamp Program in 1988 and 1990 in order to combat the hunger crisis in America” (Snap to Health). A certain amount of funding was restored, but it was harder to obtain food stamps and use them. Paper food stamps have been used ever since the beginning when they were first introduced, but in the late 1990s the Electronic Benefit Transfer cards were made current. “The cards were instituted to reduce program fraud [and] ensure ease of use of food benefits by program participants” (Snap to Health). After EBTs were made, children eighteen and younger were able to start participating in the benefits of the Food Stamps Program. Since children were now able to participate, society considered that most of the concerns with child poverty would be gone, but is child poverty actually
The program created to ensure that people had access to nutritious food began over 70 years ago, and has had numerous names. In 1939, the First Food Stamps Program(FSP) was created by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Milo Perkins. It would allow people to obtain orange stamps that allowed for them to purchase food. Then, after the first FSP ended, the Pilot Food Stamps
In just two and a half decades the rate of obesity in the United States has more than tripled. In 1985 less than ten percent of Americans were obese. As of July 2011, 33.8 percent of adults and 17 percent of children are obese ( Center for Desase Control). This is a disturbing trend that is being directly influenced by the use of agricultural subsidies. Many notable politicians, journalists, economists, and nutritionists have argued that the removal of agricultural subsidies would be a good first step to fighting the obesity epidemic because they make fattening foods cheap and abundant (Alston, Rickard and Okrent). The act of paying farmers to overproduce has also changed the demographic that is obese. Before the industrial revolutions food was far too expensive to be able to afford enough to become obese. Being overweight was both a luxury and a symbol of one’s wealth. Today obesity has become b...
Rosenbaum, D. & Neuberger, Z. (2005, August 17). Food and nutrition programs: Reducing hunger and bolstering nutrition. Retrieved from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=510
Tom Vilsack once said “The lack of access to proper nutrition is not only fueling obesity, it is leading to food insecurity and hunger among our children”. In recent years an unruly amount of homes were classified as food insecure, which is a government measurement for when all people are not able to access nutritious foods to help maintain a healthy lifestyle. Hunger is a worldwide problem and is also a crisis in the United States of America. Because of this concern the federal government configured a temporary solution for society, called Food Stamps or now known as SNAPS. SNAPS stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Although this program helps to alleviate America’s hunger problems, it also created a new problem in the nation, which is obesity. Members on the Food Stamps program or SNAPS have abused ones advantage of discounted groceries and are buying cheaper foods that are unhealthy to one’s body. Bill Wolphin wrote for the article The Fat and the Hungry, “Currently, 127 million adult Americans are either overweight or obese.” In order to help cure the epidemic of obesity amongst the poor, massive changes need to be made in the area of assistance to mandate healthy options and eliminate the ease of processed and convenience foods which are readily available in food pantries, backpack programs, and low cost groceries.
Food insecurity can be “broadly defined as having limited access to adequate food” (Nguyen, Shuval, Bertmann, & Yaroch, 2015). While one might think that low income individuals who do not know where their next meal is coming from would be thin or underweight, many of those facing food insecurity instead struggle with obesity. This paradox may be a result of the very programs implemented to combat food insecurity in low income families. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal assistance program that gives money to households for food based on income and need. According to a study done by the USDA, “SNAP participants were more likely than income-eligible and higher income nonparticipants to be obese,” with SNAP participants being 40 percent more likely to be obese (2015). The problem is that even though SNAP provides resources to food insecure individuals, the food being provided is not nutritious and is thus contributing to the high rates of obesity in SNAP participants. Healthcare costs and mortality increase as more individuals become obese. Preventing these problems from happening by implementing nutrition education will increase SNAP participants’ health overall and bring down their healthcare costs.
Since 1970, the obesity rates in America have more than doubled. Currently two-thirds of (roughly 150 million) adults in the United States are either overweight, or obese (Food Research and Action Center). According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “overweight is defined as a body mass index (BMI) greater than 25 whereas obesity is defined as a BMI greater than 30.” There are numerous factors that contribute to obesity such as: biological, behavioral and cultural influences (Food Research and Action Center). While these factors all have a large role in obesity, there is no factor with as great of an influence as poverty.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obesity now ranks as the 10th most important health problem in the world (“Obesity Seen as a Global Problem”). Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years. Centers for Disease Control and Protection estimates that obesity contributed to the deaths of 112,000 Americans in 2000 (“Obesity in the U.S. Fast”). It is estimated that annual medical care cost of obesity are as high as $147 billion (“Obesity in the U.S. Fast”). Government-provided food stamps are often expended on junk or fast food, because it tends to be less expensive than fresh or cook food. Governments fund producers of meat and dairy products to keep prices low. For now, governments are taking a smarter and more productive approach through regulation, and by working with manufacturers.
While there wasn’t much press during the Great Depression era concerning child hunger, there were a large influx of families who suffered from food insecurity because of the economic climate of the United States. Until the mid-1980s during a recession and a reduction of federally funded food programs, there was an increase in hunger in the United States by as much as twenty million people; most of whom were children.