Health and Politics 2: oh SNAP

After a tense and lengthy senate confirmation hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was successfully confirmed as the U.S. Health Secretary as part of Trump’s second presidential administration. I wrote a season ago, before the elections, about the phenomenon of the deep and often confusing political realignment with respect to Bobby Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump. Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat from essentially an American political royal family, has increasingly been targeted as a dangerous health kook, with policy proposals that are sure to cause great harm and mass death if implemented — at least according to his critics, almost entirely liberal establishment media. He was placed on the dystopian “disinformation dozen” by the “Center for Countering Digital Hate” for spreading “digital misinformation about COVID vaccines”.

[It’s worth noting that this week, it’s been discovered that spike protein is still being produced in at least a percentage of recipients of mRNA COVID vaccines, over 800 days after administration. Spike protein is a major contributor to the pathology of a COVID-19 infection, perhaps the number one contributor. Medical officials and media assured the public that spike protein is completely cleared from the body “a few weeks” after vaccine administration. This turned out to be disinformation, and those warning about this potential effect (such as RFK) were labeled conspiracy theorists. Furthermore, it has been confirmed (but not discovered) by Yale scientists that this effect is accompanied by T-cell exhaustion, perhaps signaling permanent immune system degradation.]

It seems that most opposition to Bobby Kennedy is related to his stance on vaccines — that we should remove the liability shield protecting their manufacturers from damages lawsuits, and that they should be properly tested for safety against true placebos, as virtually no vaccine on the childhood schedule uses true saline placebos in safety trials. However, it seems that rejecting RFK’s beliefs is a package deal for some hyper-politicized individuals. This leads to defending water fluoridation, mass SSRI and psych med administration, and GMO crop promotion. This week’s version: defending the junk food manufacturers.

SNAP

RFK has proposed eliminating soda and sugary processed food purchases from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) umbrella. SNAP, colloquially and historically known as “food stamps”, supplies low-income individuals and families with monthly stipends only redeemable on food and groceries. Currently, $25 billion of the entire program is spent on soda, sugary candy and junk food — almost 25% of all SNAP dollars.

Chronic disease is on the rise across the nation, particularly in children who represented 28% of SNAP participation in 2022. Childhood diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases are skyrocketing in recent years, and this reality in large part explains the popularity and ultimate success of RFK as a politician. In his opening statement during the confirmation hearing, he remarks

Our country will sink beneath a sea of desperation and debt if we don’t change the course and ask, why are health care costs so high in the first place? The obvious answer is chronic disease … the first thing I’ve done every morning for the past 20 years – is get on my knees and pray to God that He would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic and to help America’s children.

Whether you think his motives are pure or not, there is no doubt that improving the health of our citizens, especially the youngest, would dramatically transform our entire nation.

The website homepage for the federal SNAP program emphasizes “putting healthy food within reach for those in need” and shows a young mother helping her daughter bag an apple in the produce section. Clearly, there is an emphasis on “healthy food” in the messaging from the government with respect to SNAP, at the very least on a surface level.

I’ve been on SNAP before (ironically, after being laid off from the restaurant industry during COVID lockdowns), and there were programs to double your SNAP benefits dollar amount at local farmer’s markets for fresh produce purchases. I’ve been involved in food activist circles before, often by default liberal and progressive coded, and there was always an emphasis on food deserts, racial disparities in chronic disease burden, cultural sensitivities, etc. — one would assume that defenders of SNAP would be at least a little concerned with the sheer percentage of benefits flowing toward soda and junk food. That is, until RFK points out the problem.

Health freedom advocates have long noted the sheer lunacy of counter-signaling any idea floated by a “bad guy” like RFK. Water fluoridation is a potent example, as is medical freedom with respect to novel vaccines. This is ironic, because those convinced that RFK is a harbinger of evil have no issues with certain strains of authoritarianism. Water fluoridation is for the greater good, as are vaccine passports, especially because they help foster public health in marginalized communities, or whatever. Never mind the gold-standard meta-reviews showing fluoridation IQ loss, or the fact that black people were most likely to be shunned via vaccine tracking in New York City. But put up a slight impedance to the all-too-easy access to food categories proven harmful to our health? That’s fascism, my friend.

Call me a lib, but I’m actually in favor of a robust SNAP that helps people in need. This particular issue on junk food, however, seems far from hashed out in progressive circles. Berkeley, CA was the first and still only city to pass a soda tax, in 2014. Bernie Sanders, in 2016, vocally opposed a similar measure in Philadelphia, claiming it would “disproportionately increase taxes on low-income families”. Ironically, the American Beverage Association (“big soda”) used this soundbite to run political ads fighting similar taxes in other cities.

The tax seems to be working as intended. Compared to neighboring Oakland, sugary drink consumption is down substantially — much more than I would have predicted. Taxes like these are controversial, but much more effective than I realized prior to seeing the data. It’s clear that if obesity and disease are connected to sugary drinks, then interventions to curb their consumption will have far-reaching consequences for healthcare expenditure, to say nothing of quality of life.

More broadly, sodas and other sugary junk foods are far, far more subsidized by the taxpayer than they are punished via local sin taxes. Millions of acres of corn are converted into incredible quantities of corn syrup, the vast majority of which is destined for sodas and junk food. This system represents a complete failure to nurture the American people, which is exactly RFK’s claim. I’m confident that the leftist position of “just fund it” is extremely one-dimensional, short-sighted, and doomed to fail, lest we dig deeper to the root cause of our societal malaise.

“There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism”, I proclaim! — as I munch dutifully on a McRib.

It’s claimed there a historically conservative attitude of punishment regarding limiting SNAP choices (“lobster tails”), maybe that’s accurate — however, I think RFK is coming from a place of love. I think he genuinely wants to see the citizens of this country thrive and avoid pitfalls. I don’t think subsidizing type 2 diabetes, which is essentially what we’re doing, is compassionate, loving, or helpful in any way. In today’s world, the average low-income

I don’t think we should ban sugar or police what people eat, humorous RFK memes aside. I actually think some people obsess over sugar a little too much, but a quarter of the SNAP budget going toward junk food is absolutely insane. Maybe junk food shouldn’t be subsidized by the government. Of course, that would require an overhaul of agricultural subsidies, but maybe we can start by not including junk food in SNAP benefits.

I have tried and truly struggle to understand the progressive arguments against what RFK is proposing — they sound incoherent to me. We’ve already seen evidence that a very slight, artificial hedge against soda subsidies dramatically slash sugary drink consumption in a hyper-progressive town. If you have any argument against the proposed SNAP redesign, please leave a comment below, I’d love to read it.

I have seen libertarian arguments that money is fungible anyways, and that SNAP is just subsidizing cigarettes and liquor purchasing downstream — and also, that RFK’s proposal would be an SKU whitelisting nightmare administratively. I still feel that blacklisting Doritos from SNAP would be a net positive. A problem is that no one will agree on what is “healthy” — but we all know what’s unhealthy when we see it.

What Is Healthy?

Who decides? RFK? Peter Hotez? The American Heart Association? Any claim of being an “evidence based” decision process is sure to make plenty of people mad, on any side of a dietary debate. However, I think we can safely say that PUFA-fried GMO corn products and soft drinks (sorry Peaters) are fair game on the chopping block for SNAP cuts. One notable exception — Blue Heat Takis:

I usually shop at Natural Grocers, Trader Joe’s, and Grocery Outlet, along with a smattering of other random stores. Grocery Outlet is one of my favorite shopping experiences, due to the truly insane display of gastronomic degeneracy found on the shelves. A recent trip revealed Cinnamon Toast Crunch themed bacon, evidence below. This is far from an outlier product. Ironically, I’ve found the deepest deals on health food and hippy elixirs to be found within the grungiest Grocery Outlet locations, likely because the clientele largely rejects such bullshit — more lead-tainted lion’s mane mushroom powder for me!

Many of the more progressive food activist types I know have never set foot inside a Grocery Outlet, only frequenting Whole Foods tier stores at minimum. While it’s plenty possible to forgo healthy eating shopping at Whole Foods, it seems the baseline standard of quality is more baked in to the experience, no cereal-bacon in sight. It’s almost a rule at this point that out-of-touch progressives hold opinions on classes of people they generally know nothing about, being satisfied with their internal version of a destitute SNAP eater.

I’m also skeptical that education will fix SNAP user decision making — although I think it should be available for anyone who wants it, and there are endless examples of people doing this work. I actually think this is one area where progressives really shine, creating food banks, farmers market programs, communal kitchens, food not bombs, etc … I just think people just like to eat junk food, and generally are resistant to change. Of course, making food as hyper-palatable and addictive as possible is a billion-dollar industry.

We know our food is fundamentally unhealthy, because our disease landscape has changed so dramatically in the last 50 years. Also, the average SNAP purchaser today is likely to be overweight suffering from a chronic disease, compared to non-SNAP users, and especially compared to the original, usually starving food stamps recipients from decades ago.

I get the administrative critiques of such a proposal, and I do think there are way bigger fish to fry. However, I’m not convinced banning junk food from SNAP is a horrible idea. If you disagree, please comment below, I’d love to hear from you. I think this SNAP thing is merely one head of the Hydra, while subsidies are the real root issue of our food woes. Libertarians will argue in favor of free market forces, a position I’m sympathetic to generally, however, I’m not convinced most people would be ready for the sticker shock of subsidy-free meat, dairy, and eggs, easily the most subsidized food group in the USA. Of course, junk food flows through that same pipeline, and animal feed comes from the same raw materials as corn syrup, seed oils, and industrial cereals. I absolutely understand the frustration of directly subsidizing 25% of SNAP dollars going toward absolute garbage food.

Perhaps an elegant solution would be to tax SNAP junk purchases like Berkeley does to soda outright. Combined with even steeper farmers market discounts for SNAP dollars (perhaps 3:1 or even 5:1 instead of 2:1), we can shift the flow of these dollars en masse, and transform our food economy at a basic level. Perhaps this is all too meddlesome and would only result in misery. We do know, however, that junk food makes people sick, and our healthcare model is increasingly becoming a parasite on chronic disease care. Want a real red pill? Look into the cost of kidney dialysis care in America, largely fueled by obesity and diabetes.

We all know what we would do with the “magic wand” if we wielded it, or if we were King of the world. I’m confident in my ability to create a much healthier country on paper than what America currently exhibits, but I’m also a staunch anti-authoritarian and don’t feel like we should be micromanaging grocery store decisions of Americans. However, SNAP floats billions of dollars a year toward junk food industries, and it is taxpayer money. A curious case. Let me know what you think below.

To your Health!

-Psi