It's a very good thing we chucked all those people off food stamps

by: Eric B.

Sun Jul 22, 2012 at 09:45:33 AM EDT

I'll start out by saying that food is a right, not a privilege. Healthy food is also a right, a right of living in a country blessed with a natural wealth of good soil and access to decent water. In fact, that's not a matter that is open to discussion with me. If you don't think that every person has the right to health, nutritious food and access to decent water, then the conversation will go nowhere.

I also have to admit to not being a huge fan of the way food assistance is currently provided to people who lack the means to feed themselves properly. There is nothing built into it that encourages people to make proper food choices, because the impacts of those choices are usually paid for through a government health care program, the costs for which are entirely socialized. Whatmore, because of insane policy decisions, processed foods that are terrible for you are encouraged through subsidy and cost externalization to be the cheapest available. People who receive government food assistance are twice encouraged to give in to what are natural tendencies towards salts, sugars, and fats ... things that people need but in the "natural" world are not easily available (i.e. food policy runs afoul biology, mostly because it's been left entirely at the whims of The Market).

The trick is to take food assistance and provide it in a way that provides poor people -- people on government assistance -- with incentives to make better food choices.  Not only does that go towards fulfilling our obligation to make fellow citizens not eat garbage, but it would in the long run reduce costs to government health care.

I give you a program worthy of praise.

But instead of cash, the Battle Creek resident made her purchase with a different type of currency — tokens, provided by the Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program.

“It helps me in so many ways,” Dale said. “It allows my kids and my family to eat healthy.”

When customers use their Bridge Card to shop at participating farmers markets, they receive an equal amount of up to $20 of their purchase in DUFB tokens. The tokens can then be used to buy Michigan-grown produce at the market.

There are actually a few of these sorts of things going on around the state. And, it fulfills the governor's call for healthier eating to encourage better overall health.

The problem? Tossing people off food assistance cuts off access to these programs. In addition to being needlessly cruel, at some point we should consider asking ourselves whether in the long run this is also -- considering the costs of obesity to government health and private health insurance (driven up by emergency room visits from the uninsured) -- the fiscally conservative thing to do.