Food in the News: Major Plan to Overhaul SNAP Proposed Under New Administration

By Kelly Regan, Let's Move Pittsburgh CDC Associate

To increase awareness of children’s health and wellness topics, Phipps' Let’s Move Pittsburgh program presents Food in the News, a column on local, state and national health policies and nutrition related updates that impact you.

On Monday, February 12th, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new plan to dramatically overhaul the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). The plan, titled “America’s Harvest Box,” calls for replacing a portion of SNAP recipients’ benefits with a food box delivery program.

Under this new plan, recipients would receive about half as much money to be used when making food purchases on their own, which would be replaced by shelf-stable food products, including “shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruits and vegetables.”¹ In the existing plan, SNAP recipients are already required to follow strict rules on which products they are able to purchase with their SNAP benefits. Items such as alcohol, tobacco, pet food, household items, vitamins and medicines, and hot foods are among the items that cannot be purchased.²

The USDA claims that “America’s Harvest Box” will cut costs by purchasing food products in bulk, and will also support American-made businesses.² The plan, however, has drummed up a great deal of concern and criticism due to the lack of choice recipients will have when choosing the food their families consume, along with the reduction in access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The cost of distributing food to millions of families has also been brought up as an argument against the potential for reducing costs of the program. Stacy Dean, the VP for food assistance policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities believes the idea that the government could save money by distributing food itself is "ill-informed at best."¹

The president of the National WIC Association, Douglas Greenaway, also weighed in on the proposed plan, saying that “removing choice from SNAP flies in the face of encouraging personal responsibility," and also that "the budget seems to assume that participating in SNAP is a character flaw."¹

Some of the most discouraging comments came from Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who said she raised her children on food stamps; "As a single mother who relied on food stamps to help feed my boys, I can’t overstate how offensive this proposal is. Low-income families need more access to fresh produce & healthy foods, not less."²

Hopefully, meaningful revisions will be made to the proposed plan to include fresh fruits and vegetables, along with a proposed plan to efficiently connect recipients to their monthly benefits, without increasing stigma for users. Either way, if passed, the new plan will impact many households around the country. In 2016, over 43 million people participated in SNAP.

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Sources:

1. Hunzinger, Erica, et al. “Trump Administration Wants To Decide What Food SNAP Recipients Will Get.” NPR, 12 Feb. 2018, Web.

2. Clark, Dartunorro. “Trump Wants to Replace Food Stamps with 'Blue Apron-Type Program'.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 13 Feb. 2018, Web.