I’m speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Health. I’ll be interviewed by Helena Bottemiller Evich of FoodFix from 9:00 to 9:50 a.m.. Topic: “Making sense of nutrition science.”
I’m out of the country for a few weeks (México) and missed the House hearing on whether SNAP-eligible food items should continue to include sugary beverages.
From what I gather, most witnesses opposed any change in the program, with one from the American Enterprise Institute the lone holdout.
As I discussed in the chapter on SNAP in Soda Politics, I continue to think that taking sugar-sweetened beverages out of the package is a no brainer.
I recognize that not everyone sees things this way. I suspect that people opposed to this idea are worried that any change to SNAP will leave it vulnerable to cuts, and they could well be right.
Here are their arguments:
Politico provides some sound bites on the topic:
The state of Maine, however, has just renewed its request to USDA to remove sugar-sweetened beverages and candy from SNAP-eligible items.
Maine believes the purchase of sugar sweetened beverages and candy is detrimental to the health of the SNAP population, and is antithetical to the purpose of the SNAP program.
SNAP is supposed to be a nutrition program, no? Nutrition is about a lot more than calories (and this from someone who wrote a book about calories).