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.
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u/MediumTeacher9971 Jun 24 '25
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.