In 2004 the state of Minnesota tried, unsuccessfully, to ban the purchase of "junk food" with food stamps. The request was eventually denied by the USDA on rather strange grounds, that it would "perpetuate the myth" that food-stamp users made bad choices in their grocery shopping.

In the meantime the obesity epidemic in the United States rolled on and now, in an article in today's New York Times, I read that the mayor of New York City has asked the federal government for permission to stop food-stamp recipients from purchasing sugared drinks, sodas, of course, being the major culprit in this case.

I'm waiting for the answer, but my bet is the request is denied, although we already, according to the article, ban the use of food stamps to purchase other items that can be health-detrimental, especially cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. The beverage industry will obviously lobby against the plan.  Even the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer advocacy group with a focus on nutrition and health, food safety, and alcohol policy, suggested we should instead use educational programs to teach food-stamp recipients about the dangers of sugared drinks.

So is Mayor Blomberg in favor of a Big Brother era? He already has lobbied for a state tax on sugared drinks (unsuccessfully), tightened rules on food advertising and brought the city's schools a tougher policy on which food items they can sell.

Yet almost 40% of the kids in NYC's public schools at the K-8th grade level are overweight or obese, with rates still higher in poorer areas of the city. In those same neighborhoods, studies are said to show sugared beverages are consumed at higher rates than in leaner sections of the metro area. Diabetes is twice as prevalent in poor areas of NYC as it is in more affluent ones.

So where do we stop? I totally agree that we're at a crisis point as a society, one fueled by the food industry. I personally deplore the use of food stamps to purchase sugared beverages as much as I do their being used to procure cigarettes and alcohol-containing drinks.  But who gets to decide what our choices are in a free society?

Tough questions without easy answers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 10:06 am and is filed under Governmental Efforts, Healthy eating, Obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.