Regarding Conservatives and SNAP Benefits, What’s All The Fuss About Fish?

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Tuesday night, Jon Stewart at The Daily Show highlighted a simmering resentment conservatives at FOX News have over how people use SNAP benefits, aka food stamps. He accurately emphasized that, first, food stamps may only be redeemed for select food. This is straight from the USDA web site:

SNAP benefits can only be used for food and for plants and seeds to grow food for your household to eat. SNAP benefits cannot be used to buy:

• Any nonfood item, such as pet foods; soaps, paper products, and household supplies; grooming items, toothpaste, and cosmetics
• Alcoholic beverages and tobacco
• Vitamins and medicines
• Any food that will be eaten in the store
• Hot foods

No cigarettes, no roasted turkey leg to go, no toothpaste—all of which were cited by Fox News as allowed under SNAP.

But second, Stewart pointed out that within the food category, FOX conservatives have specific ideas about which kinds of food that food stamps ought to be used for—and fresh fish is right out. Why all the fuss about fish?

Remember, the FOX audience is OLD—average age 68. Half the audience is older than baby boomers, and their standard of eating growing up was much different than today’s  standards.

A few remember the 1930s, when money was scarce, any meat was a luxury, and a meal might be bread soaked in a bowl of reconstituted powdered milk.

Some remember WWII food rationing in the 1940s and “victory gardens” where families grew a little extra food in their backyards—bigger than today’s postage stamp-size yards, of course. Food distribution was still limited, and growing your own might be the only way to get certain foods fresh. And of course, homemade preserved food was cheaper than store-bought food.

The bulk of the FOX audience remembers eating in the 1950s and 1960s, the golden age of tin (canned food).  Canned foods made many more foods available year-round. An ordinary dinner might be beef, pork, or chicken, fresh or from a can, mashed potatoes (fresh or reconstituted) and canned vegetables, or all three mixed together in a casserole with canned soup.  Or leftovers of same.  Your budget would determine the ratio of these ingredients. It’s easier to hide a small meat portion in a casserole, hence their popularity.  A fancier dinner might involve meat or produce suspended in gelatin. Tuna was available in cans, but fresh fish was only on the menu if you were well off or if you caught it yourself.  And if you were struggling financially, you were still giving your kids powdered milk.

Google some old recipes—they’ll scare you.

Fresh produce was only available in season and in your area. In the 1970s, we in California started to see small offerings of expensive South American “off-season” produce, but in the early 1980s, it was still hard to find a fresh avocado in the Midwest, even in season.

My point is, much of the FOX News audience remembers growing up in conditions we might call food insecurity today, and they believe if it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for you, especially if they are paying for your food via food stamps.

We look at the increased demand on food banks and conclude that the food stamp allowance is inadequate. They look at the same thing and conclude that people are not “pinching their pennies” and “stretching their food dollar” well enough. They are eating frivolous things like fresh seafood and fresh produce; no wonder they go through their allotment so fast.

Also remember that seniors may still be eating in a food-insecure way. Statistically, their $1200 Social Security check is probably between half and all of their monthly income, and who is arguing that seniors should get more money because they want salmon instead of Spam? Who, besides Elizabeth Warren, is saying that seniors should get more at all?

So rather than pick at details, what we need to establish is a baseline healthy diet (by today’s standards, not 1960’s), cost it out, and make it our goal to make that available to everyone. Maybe that means more food banks. Maybe that means using school cafeterias to serve dinner. Whatever it is, if our goal is for everyone to have access to a healthy diet, “hey, how come he gets to have fish” should not be part of the discussion.

Cassandra Vert

Financial writer, bookseller, strategic thinker, consultant, progressive activist, scifi geek, music lover, theater person, mastermind. B.A. University of California, Santa Barbara Cum Laude. J.D. University of Illinois. Member, California Bar. Would choose flight over invisibility but teleporting over both. Editor and contributing writer, FIX America, How Each of Us Can Help All of Us. Follow me on Twitter @buybk. Join me in progressive politics at www.planamerica.org