NYC – You wouldn’t eat 16 packets of sugar, why drink them?
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New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with the encouragement of both city and state health commissioners, is seeking to bar the use of food stamps for buying soda and other sweetened drinks.
Bloomberg is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which controls the food stamp program, for permission to institute a two-year ban that would affect the estimated 1.7 million city residents who receive food stamps. That time frame, he said, would permit health officials to study the health impact of such a ban.
The request, according to the mayor’s office, would not in any way reduce food stamp eligibility or size of the food stamp benefit received by recipients.
There are already a number of limitations on the use of food stamps — they cannot be used to purchase alcohol, cigarettes, imported foods, soap, toothpaste, paper products, cleaning supplies, or disposable diapers. Nor can they be used to purchase meals in restaurants.
More than half of New York City residents are overweight or obese, as are about 40% of the city’s school children, according to Farley and Daines.
“One in eight adult city residents now has diabetes, and the disease is nearly twice as common among poorer New Yorkers,” they wrote, adding that the diabetes rate in a poor neighborhood like East New York is about four times higher than the rate in “affluent Gramercy Park.”
The request to restrict food stamps is the latest of a series of healthy living initiatives by the Bloomberg administration, which has already overhauled the cafeteria offerings in the city’s public schools. The mayor also tried and failed to the get the state to impose a special sales tax on soda.
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We need a federal law! People on food stamps should only be able to eat boneless,skinless chicken breast and fresh veggies and be drug tested once a week.Problem solved.
You know, they can still use the food stamps to buy sugar, and Kool Aid is around 33 cents a package. I predict nothing will change, other than government money not going to Coke and Pepsi via the poor. Why not make all junk food ineligible for food stamps? Use a ratio to determine food value (protein vs carbs vs fats/ calories). W.I.C already does something similar.
The purpose of WIC, is targeted nutrition for infants and children, it is not what adults eat and it is more of an education and first resort program , the problem is “junk food” is hard to define, is a buttery chicken junk food, how about juice that has more calories than sugar, or buttery bread, lets ban butter and bread, or only allow whole wheat bread, junk food so to speak is cheaper than boneless chicken and fresh veggies , in addition not all sodas and teas have 16 packs of sugar, chocolate milk is just as unhealthy, why not ban pasta , its full of carbs, white bread is just as bad as soda, let us ban potatoes since you can make fries. Let us ban sweetened yogurt , yogurt has a done of calories that can make you fattening.
Drug testing is not necessary, of course since food stamps are at a record high, it will not make sense to drug test, and that won’t solve any issues. Singling out soda is wrong, in addition how come nobody complains about agriculture subsidies that make people obese and are for certain select crops only.
As long as they don’t ban Cadburys Dairy Milk Chocolate I couldn’t give a monkey’s…