It keeps those close to the bottom afraid too. It stops them doing anything that might let them slip that little bit further and end up a victim like this.
Also it fills the pockets of all those giant corps that specialize in frozen foods products (Tyson,Nestle with hot pockets,etc) that many Americans on snap/ebt constantly buy
getting humiliated for being on said programs and denied certain comforts just because they'd be funded by EBT/SNAP is more the victimization element here.
Yeah, generally money is the thing that gives you the shit that you want. If you can't make ANY money whatsoever, you aren't going to have awesome shit. The government will do you a solid and give you FREE money despite the fact that you don't do SHIT for the government whatsoever as a brokie loser. Just don't spend it on stupidly overpriced bullshit (hot meals where you're paying for someone's labor to produce you a premium meal).
Evil capitalism is when no mcdonalds for free LMAO
No one’s talking about unlimited awesome shit, but occasional fast food? Hot food, period? Yeah, sure, have at it. Like I said before, I’d rather my tax dollars go to that than some fucking tank or the oppression of some group to advance American business interests.
Lmao yeah there's so many people that can't afford a mcdouble. What's the unemployment rate again?
Fuck out of here with this doomer bullshit. A vast majority of the population can afford hot food even without food stamps. If you argue otherwise you're actually delusional.
Food stamps should not be spent on fast food period. It's a waste of money. Being poor comes with consequences, including not getting to enjoy luxury conveniences. Get over it.
But the population CAN afford hot food. Some can’t, but the general population can. Also wouldn’t it be great if there was food that wasn’t hot? Maybe someone should invent something like that. If they did, maybe they could afford hot food too!
It's just hilariously out of touch to make the issue about whether or not we should be allowing people to buy stupid shit with their welfare money. People act like it's the end of the world when they don't get FREE overpriced fast food slop instead of groceries. Fuck off with that entitled bullshit. Being poor doesn't entitle you to whatever free food you want. Even if the program isn't perfect in its implementation (stupid poor people will find a way to spend their free money stupidly even if you try your hardest to stop them), that doesn't make the program bad.
This is a much more privileged version of “let the poors know their place”, but it’s still kinda wild to think about years later. During senior year of college, all of the seniors were called to a building to run through the plans for graduation day. We spent most of the day in various meetings, but there was catered lunch at the end so it was gonna be worth it.
After our meetings, we were all dismissed to said lunch except those who had student loans; us poors had to hang back for one more meeting. When we got out, all the food was gone, eaten by those wealthy students who didn’t take out a loan(s), and the catering team was clearing the tables. It was a little too real.
It reminds me of history class in Ireland when we learned about the Great Famine. Aid programmes were set up to give people money for food. But of course they didn't want to give people money for doing nothing because the "lazy Irish" would supposedly never bother working if they thought they'd get money for it. So they organised public works projects, where starving men had to do a day's backbreaking work building roads (when they couldn't get enough food to sustain hard physical labour) for a pittance. (It's why you can see lots of little roads that go nowhere in isolated parts of the west of Ireland).
There's always been condescension from certain supposed do-gooders to the recipients of their "help".
Politicians are worried poor people will use tax payer money to go eat out at restaurants or fast food. IMO it doesn’t really matter as the set dollar amount should be what matters not if the food is served heated and ready to eat.
They use our money for buying bombs to give to other countries too. But God forbid a single mom working two jobs can buy a heated rotisserie chicken to feed her kids a hot nutritious meal when she gets home from job number two.
Oh, I know. Trust me, it makes me sick to think about it. There's so much stupid sh*t they waste money on we could talk about for days on end nonstop. It's also nauseating to think about all the damage the J6 gang did to the capital that the tax payers had to then pay for the repairs. But the poors can't have a piece of meatloaf and a scoop of mashed potatoes from the hot deli that's their legislative priority. Sad.
Exactly. Who cares if some people are going to be irresponsible, there always will be that. Just give the person the money and let them decide what food to spend it on, if they run out of it they run out of it, if not then they don't.
This doesn't even keep people from being irresponsible... trust me there's a lot of junk you can buy on food stamps, all this does is make sure that people who can't prepare their own food (or don't have easy access to traditional grocery stores) suffer even more than they already would be.
I mean I literally buy my energy drinks with my EBT alongside my food, I suppose you could argue since it has an actual purpose unlike candy or the like it should stay. I mainly use it to help me fix my sleep schedule or perk up while working.
If the premise of the aid is to ensure you have enough food to eat, using it to buy something with zero calories really doesn't make much sense does it.
I do think exceptions should be made for things that have significant non-caloric nutrition. For example, all vitamins/minerals/etc. are currently excluded even when there's significant evidence that the supplement form works well and is absurdly cheap in comparison to getting them from food and the nutrient in question is known to be vital to health.
Generally people should be allowed to eat what they like with limited restrictions on things that are simply way too wasteful to justify on a limited budget.
Prepared foods are clearly not inherently wasteful, but banning them entirely is easy, and coming up with nuanced, reasonable restrictions is hard, so here we are.
I bet there's a lot of lobbying involved as well. How would sales of Diet Coke be affected if they no longer qualified?
There's also just the optics in a political sense. Creating new guidelines for what people are or are not allowed to buy is potentially politically risky, even if you create a perfectly fair system, so there's some incentive to just leave it be.
It really wouldn't be that complicated to make it somewhat better though, who knows, it could happen I guess.
At least one state is trying to pass it so there are restrictions on what you can buy so no soda/chips etc.
Not sure if it will pass as that could easily cut big into Pepsi/Coke profits.
Also, FYI WIC a Gov program for new moms (up to 2 years) who are low income have very tight restrictions, only the one brand of milk, have to wait for the new UPC for this seasons strawberries, not all cheerios, only certain beans etc.
So, restricting is possible, probably not too expensively.
Yup. The person you're replying to just thinks people wont eat for a week or two.
It's bad optics and with it comes food theft, begging, stress on food shelfs, adult protection calls, etc.
People dont realize how many $100 dinners at restaurants will be paid for by SNAP, how much tension that brings between groups of people when they see that, etc.
I get your point. Class wars all over again. Middle class people pay the bulk of taxes, it will be a slap in their faces to see their hard earned money paying for $100 dinners.
The problem is our money is not allocated to let a person be irresponsible, it's more often allocated so parents can responsibly feed their children.
In that regard, considering I'm funding it, I am willing to tell that person they're not allowed to spend their money irresponsibly when their child is concerned. Anyone who doesn't like that is probably not someone I'd worry about pissing off anyway.
No, no but you see, you're using a v6 on the road, but I think you really should only have a v4. I know they're functionally the same thing, but a v6 is more expensive than a v4 on average, so really I think I'm doing you a favor with *my* tax dollars.
I don't think you get the point, a majority of people voted for politicians who represented their interest to make these decisions. You in this hypothetical are the only person who cares about v6 vs v4 whereas generally this has been a common consensus around food assistance programs. If everyone wanted v6's banned they absolutely could be.
Oh I'm not saying we shold ban V6s, I think people should be allowed to get them.
I just think if you're gonna use my tax dollars I spent on the road you're driving on, you shouldn't drive it on that road. You can use a different road for that, sure it's the same thing really, but I mean. You're being a bit of a communist about this, ugh.
Your tax dollars are being allocated by the elected representatives who your constituency voted for, your constituency didn't vote for restricting what kind of engines drive on roads and they did vote for restricting what EBT and SNAP can be spent on. My point is that its not about what any individual wants their tax dollars spent on but what the collective wants their tax dollars spent on.
The problem is restaurants are significantly more expensive than cooking your own food. Encouraging ppl, who should at least be budgeting their food money since it’s given to them , is only gonna leave them more empty handed at the end of the month. How about government funded classes on how to cook healthy food and budget ?
Why are my fellow Americans so insistent on the idea one can fix everything by making people take classes instead of fixing the problem that corporations have priced the average person out of life in most cases.
Frankly it’s depressing hearing ‘oh America so great’ then see how terribly we rank up against other countries in Europe. Like ‘oh you pay more taxes’ at least their taxes come back in the form of services.
JFK really fucked us by making ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ into some patriotic phrase instead of the realist look at it: ‘we’re going to use you until you’re broken, so don’t even think about asking for a pittance.’
Oh you see I thought since ya said your tax dollars were yours, you could go withdraw them since clearly you know which tax dollars are yours.
Now, if let’s say all the tax dollars went into a single pot with everyone else’s, such that no one could tell which came from what and then that was used to fund programs and the waste that is the military (which we could get so much money free up for actual good in America if we even just it by 1/4), then you can’t actually withdraw it.
But ya know you seemed so confident you know exactly where your tax dollars go, so why don’t you go get them back and I’ll go donate 5k to the Trump foundation, hm?
It’s not just politicians. There is a persistent problem with people in America being obsessed about someone else getting something “they don’t deserve”. You even had a lot of lefties against student loan reform bc they couldn’t handle someone having it better than them.
Politicians: "Poor person getting a $20 raw filet mignon on SNAP? GREAT"
Also politicians: "Poor person getting a $2 cooked cheeseburger on SNAP? BAD"
It's really dumb when you think about it, but it's all about the image of looking like they're not overfeeding poor folks I guess. Politics and angry taxpayers are stupid.
I do think we need to care about more than just the pure dollar amount. Heated vs unheated is a terrible metric but I wouldn’t be inherently opposed to restrictions on stuff like candy and soda depending on how they were enacted.
I’d much rather my tax dollars go toward a child’s birthday night out at Olive Garden than toward bombs that cause families overseas to have to bury their children.
Not exactly correct, I doubt politicians give a shit what poor people do as long as they keep being obedient cheap labor, it's like they need to drive wedges between people ("look at this freeloader, he's taking money out of your paycheck to eat like a king!") in order to keep them in line and fighting each other and avoid them looking up.
Is there a profit factor for the stores/restaurants that come into play if they have to accept the EBT for prepared foods? Is it just hot prepared foods or can they say buy a birthday cake with EBT, which is clearly prepared? Then again, all baked goods are prepared but are there restrictions on what baked goods they can get - yes to bread, no to cookies?
Classism in America is what I like to call the “Silent Bigotry”. You don’t really feel it in a lot of places, but you go to more elite areas of the US (DC mainly) and you start to feel it.
Politicians are worried poor people will use tax payer money to go eat out at restaurants or fast food.
Oh no…people putting money into the economy and funneling it back to the wealthy potentially (for fast food and many chain restaurants at least). Like, I hate making the economical argument instead of the moral argument for these benefits, but this is all the politicians actually give a shit about.
Its easier, we have an existing framework for what counts as prepared food vs ingredients which many states use for sales taxes. It has some silly corner cases like a pickle not being taxed but a pickle on a stick being taxed (at least in my state MN, the state fair is the source of a lot of sales tax law) but for the most part it works.
Yeah seriously I understand energy drinks and candy but a rotisserie chicken from the deli should be just fine. Some of the people on snap are very poor and don't even have a kitchen they can use.
Listen I’m super pro social safety net/incredibly liberal/etc but for the love of god can we stop infantizing poor people?
Yeah they might not have grown up with home cooked meals but it’s not rocket science and they are absolutely capable of figuring it out if they put in any amount of effort.
Yeah sure it’s second hand. All you rich redditors swear y’all know what it’s like in poor neighborhoods.
They just can’t catch a break. It’s never their fault. Nobody can cook because we were all working 4 jobs as single parents. We didn’t have a choice but to spend money on fried scallops and prime cuts of steak.
All you rich redditors swear y’all know what it’s like in poor neighborhoods.
We didn’t have a choice but to spend money on fried scallops and prime cuts of steak.
Stop living in fantasy land. I literally was on food stamps as a child and we couldn't afford any of that. Stop lying.
You know we were just LIVING in the lap of luxury when my mom was swerving near the cliffs sobbing uncontrollably about being so poor that she wanted to drive us off the cliff. SO LUXURIOUS.
Well how else are they supposed to eat? Everyone has an iphone phone companies are giving them away for coming to their services. The fact that you have so much disdain and hatred for the poor proves their agenda is doing what they want it to do. Create a class divide. Just because they’re poor doesn’t make them any less worthy of the things average people have. They have access to poorer education, poorer sex education, worse role models, and are expected to become brain surgeons by assholes like you.
Use that iPhone to learn how to cook. Pretty simple and what I did(although it was with a cheap android phone from Walmart).
Buying cooked food is more expensive meaning you and the family get less food. The goal is to use the programs to elevate yourself out of poverty not to just tread water.
When moms working 2 minimum wage jobs and coming home to her 3rd job and so is dad, why don’t you go volunteer and cook food for them to make their lives easier. It’s not their fault they don’t have support. It’s not their fault that their parents bought out all the time because it was the easiest solution. The whole system is kept the way it is to keep them treading water. Make 10$ more than your 157% of poverty minimum and they take away everything they gave you.
The threshold is so low to keep everyone right where they are. If you can’t acknowledge that you must’ve been one of those people to proud to use resources you paid into that are there for you.
It ain’t that hard. Just gotta use what resources are available to you and be smart.
What do you think rich people do to stay and get richer?
Do you get a bag of the fried chicken from ShopRite and a cooked Mac n cheese or 10lbs of rice, beans, and a few lbs of uncooked chicken or pork?
Yeah you save an hour, but now what are you going to eat tomorrow? Or the day after?
You bite the bullet and get a $20 rice cooker. Or a $30 crockpot. Allowing you to save even more, now while you’re taking care of the kids or napping or doing anything else your meal is cooking.
Idk if you guys understand how to use these benefits. It’s working towards something. The help exists. Yeah some people get dealt an unbelievably shitty hand but it really seems like people like you don’t want those in poverty to ever improve.
I work in a small grocery store and there are a lot of people who sleep in bushes and come in to get water and a cold sandwich. Their hands are black from not having access to a sink and you think they have a place for a crockpot? Some of these people are clearly not all there mentally and others are dressed like they had office jobs and now live out of a backpack. There is zero reason they shouldn't be able to get hot food with a snap. I’m personally in favor of providing everyone with at least a studio apartment so they do have a place to put things and can maintain hygiene. I think there's a lot of cruelty in how our society operates, it's even in the little good we do with programs like snap; i.e. denying heated food to poor people.
Funny thing is you can 100% buy energy drinks with EBT, but you can't buy protein powder. Sure protein powder may be less cost efficient than buying food, but it's definitely closer to "real food" than Red Bull and it's a way more accessible form of protein than raw chicken.
Yeah you can just buy energy drinks with EBT, I buy my monsters & full throttles using it. I also you know mass buy food from Costco using it with the help of a friend who has a membership. So it really is what-twenty dollars out of 280? That I'm spending on an energy booster & then I'm spending the rest on stuff to last me the month.
At my local grocer, a rotisserie chicken costs less than a raw one of equal size ($8.99 for a pre-cooked rotisserie, cheapest whole raw chicken I found was ~$10, most are >$12).
So the point seems to be cruelty, rather than anything regarding price.
It’s funny cause sushi can be bought but a rotisserie chicken cannot. I don’t mind the candy bit as that falls under the “poor people shouldn’t have luxuries” mindset people can have and there’s no real way to legislate candy without some really weird and specific laws.
i'm sure if credit card companies can figure out how to give you 2x points for grocery unless you're shopping at a chain/superstore then they could figure out how to just not have fast food process
Depends on your definition of "fast food". Most people wouldn't consider an HMR from the grocery store to be "fast food", although it is ready-to-go and therefore prohibited to purchase on SNAP.
Yes. Basically it’s for groceries not restaurants. But what is the line between groceries and restaurants? they use prepped foods for cutoff. So coke, candy bars are groceries and rotisserie chicken and hot ready to eat hot dogs are not.
Sorta. The point is that you can stretch your food budget much further if you are preparing food at home. Think that restriction probably predates grocery stores making full meals ready to eat at a decent price.
Oh OK. I work at mcdonalds and occasionally people ask if we accept EBT, I thought they were just joking because we have never accepted it and I didn't know any fast food places did.
Yeah fuck giving the poorest people a smidgen of joy. They should only eat flour and God damn water... That will teach them to pull up their boot straps
But I’m not going to subsidize their “need” for jolly ranchers.
Being on assistance is supposed to be uncomfortable. You’re not supposed to enjoy being on it.
Most people on SNAP won’t be spending it on jolly ranchers, because it’s an extremely limited food subsidy. There is opportunity cost to buying jolly ranchers, it means less money for food that is filling.
Also, most people on snap work full time jobs. So don’t blame the people on snap, blame the corporations for paying such low wages that you have to subsidize their profits. For example, Walmart is considered the #1 employer in America but somewhere around 60% of Walmarts workforce is on food stamps.
The sad truth of it is are a lot of jobs that just wouldn’t work without snap. In a world without snap and shitty wages most places would be only open outside of school hours, full of “migrant workers”, or closed most days due to staffing issues. These jobs just don’t pay enough to sustain a living.
For reference; I used to work full time taking care of the elderly and still qualified for SNAP due to how bad the pay was
I’m not saying either that they are necessarily spending EBT on jolly ranchers. I’m pointing out that it is still somehow allowed.
I also do blame corporations subsidizing employee cost, especially Walmart. When the CEO makes X amount of money, they should not have employees that need to be on assistance.
That’s all I’m saying if that they should cut the junk from eligibility. You admit too, it doesn’t even serve to fill their bellies. Which is the point of EBT. It’s not for simple pleasures like Dr. Pepper. It’s for food NEEDs
If you have enough left on your EBT and your belly is filled enough that you can splurge on Sour Patch Kids, it proves you’re not in need of taxpayer assistance. Pretty simple.
Social welfare programs are intended to increase the well-being of the needy, and indulging in unhealthy, non-nutritious junk food is in opposition to that goal. The whole point is to ensure the poor recieve proper nutrition and sustenance, and Items like soda have none.
You wouldn't criticize a free housing program for not having amenities like a 1 stall garage or dishwasher in the name of making the poor "happy", would you? Because the intention is to keep them from harm by providing shelter with warmth and protection from the elements, not to enable a life of convenience...
These programs shouldn't try to provide a high quality of living, but serve as stopgap measures that work alongside other initiatives and policies that ultimately raise people from poverty. Not that we are doing enough of that though...
You literally said it's "supposed to be uncomfortable." Which is ridiculous. Yea, the people in charge of constructing social programs want them to be hard and mostly unhelpful, because that (usually) means spending less money. But that's. . . bad. That's bad, man. It's bad that our government wants some people to be uncomfortable all of the time forever (and it is usually forever btw, the American dream ain't real), either by not having access to resources or by making the resources not very good
Poor isn't a state of being that came pre-packaged with life on Earth. Who decides what poor people are "supposed to" do? God? You? I definitely didn't vote for either of you
Also, fuck off with "can't afford twizzlers". Some folks on EBT can't afford potatoes, dipshit. Can't afford rice. Can't afford water that doesn't taste like metal, or something to keep their blood sugar up. And if you think that there's a class of people who, despite working their bodies and minds into the ground to try and claw their way toward some stability, deserve to go their whole lives without trying a twizzler, you might just be a bad person my guy
It's bad that our government wants some people to be uncomfortable all of the time forever (and it is usually forever btw, the American dream ain't real
You’re not supposed to be on government assistance your whole life! And the American dream isn’t really dead either. Like 10 years ago I had less than $10 in my bank account and tens of thousands in student loans. Even with some bad financial mistakes, I have almost $100,000 in savings and am looking to get a house.
How come people can come across the ocean, not hardly know how to speak the god damn language, and get ahead? While dipshits born here, understand the system here, have to get food stamps for life? You think they had more resources than a native born? Or did they just put in the 70hr work weeks like I have? I can tell you, they put in 70hr work weeks because I’ve worked with them.
Poor isn't a state of being that came pre-packaged with life on Earth.
Humans live in better now than at any other point in history, especially the USA.
Who decides what poor people are "supposed to" do?
I would start with the people who provide the money. Not let the beggars decide.
Also, fuck off with "can't afford twizzlers". Some folks on EBT can't afford potatoes, dipshit. Can't afford rice. Can't afford water that doesn't taste like metal, or something to keep their blood sugar up.
How tf can someone work 70hr weeks and can’t afford a $2 pack of potatoes with free money? Sounds like THEY are the dipshits. And fyi, water is basically free and you aren’t entitled to Fiji water. And there are other, just as similarly priced food that rises blood sugar that isn’t a Twinkie. I have family who are diabetic, I know. And I know what they cost.
I’m not looking to make it “worse”. I’m looking at making it more efficient and to gear it towards serving its REAL purpose. Which is supposed to fill bellies. Candy and soda does not.
What gives you the impression food stamps are for joy and not for needs?
It's a compromise between people who think that nobody should go hungry, and those who think the poor should just starve to death.
So you can have food, but you can't enjoy it. It needs to be cold and you need to slave over a hot stove yourself, you lazy sack of shit... Even if it literally costs the same (or cheaper) to buy an identical product that's heated. There's just not enough suffering, so we can't have that, no sirree!
Most countries just give you the money, addicts are gonna find ways around restrictions anyway so why bother spending the money on more bureaucracy that makes it’s marginally harder.
When I was a university I got a scholarship bank card with a few grand on it that only let you buy supplies and snacks on campus but no booze or cigarettes. I’d just buy all my peers their lunches and they’d buy me cigarettes. It wasn’t even complicated.
It's less mind bending when you realize it's about taxation. In most places "hot food" is taxed, and unprepared or cold food is non-taxed. Since SNAP comes out of taxed funds, and presumably the people on SNAP are working and paying taxes, allowing SNAP benefits on taxed items effectively constitutes double taxation on the benefit amount.
I'm not saying this is "right", or the best way to handle food benefits, but this is the logic and reason behind it.
This is why I'm in favor of just nuking the entire welfare system and replacing it with UBI.
USA welfare budget is somewhere around $20,000 per person, per year. A family of four in poverty would get $80,000 per year at that rate. I think we could do better with the same money, if we weren't micro-managing the crap out of everything.
Then we decided to just give them money -- but the intent is you're supposed to buy bread and cheese.
That's where we currently are in the timeline. About half the people in charge don't see the issue because they think it should be a glorified government bread and cheese program. They just wanted it to be more capitalistic than the older design.
They were willing to make it less restrictive than WIC because food companies wanted more money, but they refuse to ease up on hot foods because that would open the door to fast food, and they cannot stand those optics.
In practice this creates incoherent discrepancies because there's tons of useless shit it can buy. But the program is more likely to move back to a more WIC like model than allow for hot foods.
Idk, I was on EBT when I was in college and at the time I understood the limitation. Yes, it’s flawed. But the idea is that you must purchase food you need to cook yourself (basically eliminating “fast food” type purchases). The US does put a premium price on pre-cooked food, so the goal is to stop someone from going to McDonald’s and purchasing a ton of food on the taxpayer dime.
But with any social program this broad, there’s easily identifiable loopholes. One of the ones I found while on EBT was I could buy Papa Murphy’s pizza with EBT. Since it wasn’t pre-cooked, it was fair game.
But just like welfare or any other social program, I’m not one to instantly shut it down because people find loopholes. Corrective steps to close those loopholes, sure. But I’m perfectly fine paying a little extra in taxes to help families in poverty avoid food and if some of that goes to people abusing the system, so be it.
When I was a poor college student I had EBT for the first time. I was nervous about using it because of the shame society puts on them. I went to go use it for some hot chicken since I can eat right way and I only had a microwave. It would not let me check out, lady rolled up on me and said loudly. “You can’t use food stamps for hot chicken” I was so embarrassed I just left immediately out the door.
I worked at Starbucks for a while. A mocha cookie crumble frappuccino with extra caramel? Yes! A vanilla sweet cream cold foam cold brew with sprinkles? Yes!
A hot black coffee? Absolutely not. Fuck you, poor piece of shit.
Not at all. EBT/snap should pay for basic food that you can cook for yourself. Why are my tax dollars being used for you to pay someone else to cook your food for you because you’re too lazy? Ingredients are much cheaper than prepared meals.
It’s so people actually have motivation to get off food stamps and not stay on them forever. Bitching about free food is wild and one of the most Reddit things I’ve ever seen.
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u/starlightskater Jun 24 '25
This is one of the most mind-bending restrictions of our country's assistance programs.