Junk Food Stamps

A few weeks ago The New York Times ran an op-ed piece about ways to boost the consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables in "food deserts," and it struck a chord with me. The piece starts with the statistic of only one in six low-income zip codes having access to a supermarket compared to one in two supermarkets for higher-income areas. With little access to fruits and vegetables, residents in those places turn to highly processed foods from convenience stores and the like, where good, healthy choices are relatively scant.

What the writers propose includes a change (which seems, to me, pretty reasonable) in the Department of Agriculture's requirements for stores accepting food stamps as well as a reevaluation of what kinds of foods qualify for the SNAP program.

The article is pretty brief, but it's worth a read. I used to work in a small-town grocery store, but it wasn't until recently when I started to learn more about cooking, nutrition, and the dangers of processed foods that I began to realize how insane it is that junk food and soda still get a pass when it comes to food stamps.