I was interested in this blog post less for its actual content (that increasing food stamps money is a poor idea for a fiscal stimulus...snooze) than for the way the comments to it (which I did not read in their entirety) reminded me of a strange way that people often frame the debate on food stamps. You frequently see these two opposing arguments:
(1) The food stamps program contributes to obesity among the poor because it provides them incentives/ability to eat large amounts of crappy food.
(2) The food stamps program reduces food insecurity, which is a serious problem among the poor. ("Insecurity" is variously used to describe a subjective feeling that people have about their access to food in the future, or an actual risk of going without food, or both.)
I don't understand why these arguments are considered mutually exclusive.
Despite the fact that body fat is, in the long run, beneficial for humans needing to survive genuine starvation situations, the presence of extra fat does nothing to stop the feeling of hunger that comes with having an empty stomach or the feeling of weakness etc. that accompanies low blood sugar levels. Hunger is an unpleasant state that all animals (as far as I know) are motivated to end - it is, after all, the psychology 101 textbook example of a basic drive for a reason.
And as every single person in the world who has ever had the opportunity to eat their fill even once knows, that post-Thanksgiving lunch feast feeling of "Oh, man, I'm so full that I will never eat again!" is rarely sustained for the remainder of a single day. So it's not like food stamps users will eat a bunch of hot wings and ice cream one day and have their food needs met for the rest of the month. No matter what they eat today, or how much, they will need to eat again tomorrow.
These are obvious truths that some people do, however, selectively forget. I admit that I have been guilty of projecting different interpretations of eating situations based on the characteristics of the people involved, and it's a stupid, shitty thing to do. I have seen a very fat person eating a burger and fries in a fast food restaurant and had a ridiculous thought like, "Jeez, lady, you don't need to be eating all that food" while eating a burger and fries myself. But of course, I'm eating it because I am hungry; she is obviously just a fat cow. What the fuck, right? Fat people get hungry. Poor people get hungry. But it's so easy to make these kinds of condemnatory attributions about the reasons behind other people's behavior while rationalizing the same behavior in ourselves. It's pretty much an inescapable fact of human psychology. It's still wrong and no sort of basis for making supposedly objective judgments about human actions.
(By the way, a related thing that makes me a bit nuts, and that I do not think that I do often, is when skinny people try to deny fat people the right, on some kind of moral basis, to seek out enjoyment in food because they have already "used it up" on previous eating binges. I suppose this can be construed as a fairly straightforward application of a sin and punishment model, but I don't see many of these critical individuals lining up behind an argument like: "Hey, skinny ass person, remember that summer in high school when you slept in until 1:00 in the afternoon every day? Well, you are hereby denied 4 hours of sleep every night for the next 3 months and are no longer entitled to a pillow, top sheet, or any climate control in your bedroom because you have used up your allotment of sleep in adequate quantity and pleasurable quality.")
Anyway, it seems to me obviously true that a person can use food stamps to both:
(1) Eat too much of unhealthy things - from ignorance (a rather condescending explanation that I believe is sometimes accurate but generally over-applied), convenience, or as a means of experiencing some straightforward pleasure that is hard to get other ways due to being poor - and over time, get fat from it.
(2) Ensure that they will be able to feed themselves every day and not go hungry.
I wish that this was more frequently acknowledged as fundamental background to any discussion on the topic of food stamps.
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2 comments:
The obvious way to deal with item 1 without hurting item 2 is by banning 'bad' food from the food stamp program. Which has been done. There is a limit to how far that can go, but it is unlikely the extra few bucks can go toward coke and twinkies. (I'm not sure what the alternative the argument (1) people have in mind - the Return of Federal Cheese?)
The only animals that I can think of which aren't motivated to end hunger are those moths born without mouths. They just are motivated to reproduce in the few days before they run out of energy. ("Starve" being a strong word to describe the effect of a lack of food on an animal with no digestive system.)
Knowing someone who had been on food stamps a few years ago the problem is that even with food stamps one cannot afford to buy fresh produce, high quality meat, etc. (which would help prevent obesity), so one has to buy food that fills you up even if it isn't very healthy. So, even if one is trying to eat healthy food it can be difficult to do so.
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