Thread: Why is there a hunger problem in the U.S.?

Originally Posted by ChrisL

That is the argument I've always heard as well. Limiting the kinds of foods a person can purchase through govt food assistance would be discriminatory and demeaning.

And yet the WIC program strictly specifies what can be purchased.

My brother in Hawaii told me he knew somebody that would let me use his EBT card and buy what I wanted in the grocery store if I would give him cash. Somewhere around 75 cents to the dollar. Probably wanted the cash so he could buy stuff like alcohol or cigarettes I assumed. I declined!


Mike

Originally Posted by 32t

I had money for beer and a friend had food stamps. I bought the beer and he bought a live lobster!

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Originally Posted by ChrisL

That is the argument I've always heard as well. Limiting the kinds of foods a person can purchase through govt food assistance would be discriminatory and demeaning.

Originally Posted by Utopian

I wish the Food Stamp program were run like the WIC program. That is, restricting the FOOD that can be purchased to actually healthy stuff. IF you truly are hungry or your family is hungry, then good quality nutritious food should be the only thing you should be buying. That means no soda, no chips, and no candy. I know that the argument has been made that they should have the right to eat whatever they want but that should NOT be the case when it is a handout.

They have the "Right" to eat it or don't eat it.

Quite a few years ago, my wife was manager of an admin office, mostly accounting, I was working odd jobs, because the kids were small and I was needed at home. Every month I would go to her office and we would sit in the staff room and go over the menu plan, so I could shop for what was needed for ingredients. I am a capable cook, and everything was homemade. One of her senior staff remarked "Wow you guys eat gourmet every day". I found this a little odd as she was part of an average middle class family. Later that week I payed attention to what others had in their carts while shopping. There were a lot of packaged foods being purchased by a lot of people. My point is that a lot of people don't know how to cook from scratch anymore, so restricted welfare recipients to only healthy foods could put them buying stuff they and many others have no idea how to prepare anymore. I have cooked on many boats and logging camps and it shocks me as to the number of cooks that cannot cook.

Not to be harsh, but gee, it ain't that hard to cook real food. The key is to buy 80% of your food from the produce section. Peel it, chop it, and put it in a pan.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Not to be harsh, but gee, it ain't that hard to cook real food. The key is to buy 80% of your food from the produce section. Peel it, chop it, and put it in a pan.

I tend to agree but there is a good many people that grew up eating store food and that is all they know. I blow people away with really simple stuff regularly, although in this neck of the woods produce is crazy expensive. Everyone has a freezer full of seafood, due to the oceans bounty, but nobody knows how to grow potatoes, and it doe not get much more simple than that. There is next to zero agriculture here, and the prices for those items are pretty high price. When full prices are high it is even worse here. However this is not your mainstream area.

Originally Posted by ChrisL

Does anyone know why this apparently is not the case?

If you chose to spend some time volunteering in a program that helps such people you will meet a number of them and you can find out the specific reasons in different cases. More than likely you'll determine that there isn't a simple or simplistic answer regardless of how many times such answers are offered by people who never bother to get involved.

I guess this seems harsh, but anyone who pays taxes is involved. And you know the system is broke because some of the people on it are just plain thief. Just go to the casinos down in tunica after cards are loaded, you,ll have plenty of offers to let you use the card for .60 cent on the dollar so they can gamble. So they ain't starving, while the ones who are hungry suffer. Tc

People worry about abuse of the welfare system but growing up in a manufacturing town I don't see the same amount of ire directed at the "job creators" closing profitable plants to move them to Mexico or outsourcing to China to get an extra 18 million dollar stock options or bonuses. Basically leaving hundreds to thousands having to enroll in these systems or take jobs that barely meet the poverty limit