SNAP & the Farm Bill

INVEST IN SNAP-INVEST IN AMERICA's HEALTH
By Declan Kingland, Health Programs Intern  

A study has described obesity as, “the toxic consequence of economic insecurity and a failing economic environment.” It has long been known that the incidence of chronic illnesses, including obesity, follows a socioeconomic gradient, with the highest rates observed in populations with the lowest levels of education and income , and childhood obesity is no exception . Socioeconomic status (SES) has been found to be independently related to childhood and adolescent obesity by a series of studies. An equally plentiful number of studies have illustrated that dietary factors play an extensive role in the development of health inequities of developed countries , and they suggest that remediating SES monetary disparities can be a key part of reducing these health disparities.

One of the key federal programs designed to help impoverished Americans is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP is a major federal nutrition supplement program that aims to address dietary inequities by providing money directly to eligible families . It serves as “the nation’s first line of defense against hunger and [is a] tool to improve nutrition among low income Americans.”

Although SNAP makes a series of serious benefits to the American population, it is not without it critics. Some critics of SNAP say that its participants are obviously eating enough as many of them are overweight or obese and therefore do not need federal funding to assist them. Unfortunately, the converse is true as the tendency of America’s working poor to be overweight directly related to a lack of funds, not an excess of them.

Dietary guidelines call for meals high in whole grains, lean meats, fish, fresh vegetables and fresh fruit, all of which are low in energy density and high in nutrients as they promote a healthier weight while foods of high energy density and low nutrient content are high in refined grains, added sugars, and added fats and promote an unhealthy weight. Unfortunately in the United States energy density and cost are inversely related while nutrition density and cost are directly related making the cheapest foods in the country the unhealthiest. By definition, the diets of low income Americans are severely restricted by budgetary constraints and they must consistently choose the cheaper unhealthy food options that have a high energy density and lower nutritional value . In fact, a recent study based on the US Department of Agriculture Thrifty Food Plan showed that the cost of substituting healthier food options into their diets can cost upwards of 40% of the average disadvantaged family’s food budget . An increase of that amount is simply not feasible when 67% of their income is already accounted for within preexisting food and housing costs. For some low SES families, buying healthier is simply not an option if they wish to consistently feed their children.

Even if these families are able to gather the funds required to improve their diets, they are sometimes unable to because they live in a food desert. Food deserts can form because supermarkets and grocery stores tend to cluster in more affluent areas , leaving families outside of these areas to shop at stores that do not provide the same variety of, or simply do not carry, quality healthful foods . Impoverished families are also less likely to own cars making it harder for them to reach out of town supermarkets in both rural and urban areas. This lack of personal transport is particularly concerning as according to the Food Nutrition Service Department of the United States Department of Agriculture the average reported distance to a SNAP participant’s most sued store ranged from 2.5 miles for an urban household to 14.4 miles for rural areas.

Food insecurity is a situational risk where families are unable to access foods due to physical, geographical or monetary constraints. The prevalence of food insecurity has been slowly decreasing in recent years but still affects millions. As recently as 2010 14.5% of all American households were food insecure including 5.4% who experienced severe food insecurity. Even though this figure has been decreasing recently, it is still significantly higher than the figures from a couple of decades ago. Data also shows that food insecurity affects Hispanic community in substantially higher rates than other communities as Hispanic communities are more prevalent in large cities and in the South and West portions of the United States. More concerning perhaps are the 3.98 million households with children that were food insecure and 386,000 households that suffered from severe food insecurity in 2010, adding up to nearly 10% of all households with children.

The consumption of these cheap, energy dense foods is oftentimes done in a cycle that includes eating less at, or skipping, other meals entirely especially in families that have reported that they have to decide between spending for food and other essentials such as housing, utilities, or medicine. The practice of chronically cycling your food intake can have disastrous effects on your metabolism leading to biochemical changes that promote the storage of fat and subsequently cause weight gain. This makes your body make you want to binge on food when it becomes available. This cycle is only exacerbated when is done in conjunction with systematically overeating.

The mantra everyone has heard from their doctor or health professional is that diet and exercise is the key to maintaining a healthy weight. We have already seen how a healthy diet is not always available to families of low SES and unfortunately access to safe places for physical activity is not always available to them either. These families do not have access to safe avenues for physical education as their neighborhoods often have fewer parks, green spaces, bike paths and recreational facilities and any spaces that they do have access to are often not as conducive to family fitness due to unsafe playground equipment, high rates of crime and high levels of traffic in the immediate and surrounding areas.10

You can now see what an uphill battle families with low SES have in maintain a healthy body weight. SNAP seeks to correct that by providing funds to those with the most need, families or individuals with a net income below 100% of the poverty line. In fact SNAP benefits lift 4.5 million Americans, including almost 2 million children, out of poverty every year, which accounts for nearly 13% of participating households. SNAP is uniquely qualified to impact childhood obesity as 61% of SNAP funding goes to participants that have children in their households, so its funding directly reaches younger populations. In fact, when SNAP funding was added to other income in 2007 the percentage of working families with children below 50% of the poverty line dropped from 20% to 4% and the percentage of families with children at or above the federal poverty guidelines increased from 26% to 45%.

The fact that SNAP can directly influence the nutrition of children is important because childhood obesity damages almost every key system in the body and can lead to a variety of disorders in the metabolic, digestive, respiratory, circulatory and skeletal systems. This damage is persistent and can affect that child’s health for the rest of their life. Numerous studies have found that SNAP positively contributes to a household’s overall dietary quality with child participants having lower rates of nutritional deficiency and higher levels of essential vitamins and minerals such as iron, zinc, niacin, thiamin and vitamin A. This is because the majority of SNAP benefit funds go towards the purchasing of vegetables, fruits, grain products. In fact, some studies have shown that “the diets of SNAP participants as measured by the Healthy Eating Index are similar to that of higher income Americans.”

In recent years SNAP management has worked towards making Farmers Markets accessible to the program’s beneficiaries in an effort to take advantage of their wide variety of fresh produce and products as reasonable prices. This initiative has been gaining ground with almost three times more Farmer Markets part of the program and there has been an almost 50% increase in spending at Farmers in recent years.

SNAP has also been shown to reduce the incidence of food insecurity in the United States. The receipt of SNAP lowers your likelihood of being food insecure by almost 30% and reduces the likelihood of being very food insecure by almost 20%. SNAP is also uniquely capable of reaching families suffering food insecurity with 41% of food insecure and 42% of extremely food insecure households receiving SNAP as recently as 2010. The vast majority of stores authorized to accept SNAP benefits are supermarkets, super stores, groceries and convenience stores which provides the best balance between allowing people of all neighborhoods to purchase goods and making available a system of stores that can provide the healthy, nutritious foods these families require. This plan seems to be working as 83% of SNAP benefits are redeemed at supermarkets and superstores, with 96% of SNAP participants shopping at a superstore at least once a month taking advantage of their wider variety of high quality food at lower cost.
,br> SNAP Nutrition Education (Snap-Ed) is a program that runs in tandem with SNAP and is meant to educate SNAP participants so that they can use their benefits to make the healthiest choices possible within their limited budgets. This program has national reach with all fifty states currently operating SNAP-Ed Programs. In this way SNAP helps those it serves get the most of the funds it provides and their commitment to this endeavor is constantly growing with funding for the project increasing steadily over the years.

SNAP is able to accomplish all of the above in a manner that is highly efficient and effective. A move towards electronic case filings and EBT cards has made the disbursement of funds timely and has severely cut down on the trafficking of SNAP benefits with only one cent of every dollar being trafficked. As SNAP has grown it has been refining it disbursement process leading to a record low over-disbursement percentage of less than 3% and 98% of funds going to eligible households. The administrative costs of the program have also reached an all-time low of less than 10% of total program costs, which are divided almost evenly between state and federal governments.