Pages

Thursday, November 13, 2014

The California Restaurant Association is lobbying San Diego County supervisors to allow participants in the CalFresh Food Benefits program to use their federally funded debit cards to receive hot, prepared meals at restaurants. North County Times reports:
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved early plans to allow elderly, disabled and homeless recipients to redeem their county-administered benefits at local restaurants. With the vote, county staff is charged with crafting a way to put the plan in place, and presenting it to the board in three months.
Supporters say restaurants should be an option for food stamp recipients because many have no way to cook or store the food they receive at grocery stores. About 10 percent of the county's 213,000 food stamp recipients would be eligible for the program, county officials said.
“A lot of the elderly and the homeless don't have kitchens,” said Andrew Casana, a lobbyist for the California Restaurant Association, speaking to the board at its downtown chambers.
The association brought the idea to board members last year, saying it would boost business and fill a community need. The number of people receiving food stamps countywide has spiked by 79 percent in two years, according to the county.
At first blush this seems like a terrible idea to me, but I can see why they are taking the proposal seriously. The option would only be open to the 10% who are homeless or don't have access to a kitchen. The menu items would be limited to supposedly healthy options, but the list of participating restaurants doesn't inspire confidence -  Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut, Jack In The Box, KFC, and Carl's Jr.. I am thinking of one homeless person I'm working with lately who doesn't have access to a kitchen and he mostly just wants peanut butter from our food pantry. The worst fast food would be a better option for him than just peanut butter. So for him, and people like him I would support something like this.
What concerns me is that this is the beginning of a shift in the way federal dollars are used to help the poor. This door has already been opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I'm wondering how long it will take the lobbyists to suggest that the program has been so successful that they need to open it up to people who have kitchens but who don't know how to cook. That is a major problem for many people in poverty. In working with the EBT program in Spokane County at the farmers' market, I know there is hard fast rule that benefits cannot be, in any circumstance, used for hot, prepared foods. I think that's a good thing, but I'd like to see more resources go into helping people in need develop skills for preparing healthy meals with low cost fresh foods subsidized by the government. Another helpful direction would be to help people learn to grow their own foods and preserve them. Ironically, the local food movement that is much maligned as elitist, is the cultural resource that is best able to help people poverty develop these skills. 
The Food Sense program in Spokane County is a doing some of this important work.
Three comments on this post so far. Add yours!
  • Itsgodswill on January 12 at 12:16 p.m.
    “At first blush this seems like a terrible idea to me, but I can see why they are taking the proposal seriously.”
    I agree 100%. I can’t help but to be disgusted by the idea of people being able to use their food stamps on fast food..But I am even more disgusted by the fact that people have to go hungry. I never thought I’d say this (or even that I’d have the option to say this), but I would fully support something like. Not only would it give those less fortunate people hot food, but it would also give them the right to be in a warm establishment during winter months without being thrown out for loitering.
  • pablosharkman on January 13 at 10:11 a.m.
    Various comments gleaned quickly from food networks this morning:
    The recession has hit families hard. According to the USDA, between 2008 and 2009, more than 7 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. A 2010 study by the Brookings Institution and First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group, estimated the total number of people currently on food stamp rolls is 36.5 million with half of those estimated to be children.
    With our current health care crisis, the poor health in our urban centers and the lack of adequate health care for low-income communities, to legitimize fast food as a viable option for food stamp use seems irresponsible. While Michelle Obama plants a garden to emphasize to the country the importance of eating fresh vegetables and highlighting the problem of childhood obesity, our states are allowing the fast food industry even more access to the waistlines of its residents.
    Should Food Stamps Be Used for Soda?
    Nationally, soda companies raked in a $4 billion subsidy last year through purchases by the 41 million Americans on food stamps.
    Because of the way it is manufactured, some HFCS contains mercury, a potent brain toxin, at higher levels than those considered safe by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, a 2009 article in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Environmental Health found. While the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found no mercury in soda in the majority of beverages it tested, it was present in “nearly one in three of the 55 HFCS-containing food products including in such brands as Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Hershey’s, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain and Yoplait.”
    While that corporate spin is as transparent as 7-Up, critics do have a valid point when they argue that the poor turn to junk and fast food not out of ignorance, but because they are generally easier to obtain than fresh produce and other healthier items — and they deliver far cheaper calories. But part of the economic draw derives from farm policies that — through subsidies that create cheap corn-based foods, including soda and meat — inherently disadvantage more healthful items.
  • pablosharkman on January 13 at 10:15 a.m.
    Think outside the box (Jack’s, McD’s, Carl’s Jr.’s, Pizza Hut’s, KFC,’s Taco Bell’s — do you know who owns these? Think Big Soda, Big Corn, Big HFCS!), please —
    The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted today to put a ban on new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. City Officials are hoping the ban will help slow the rapidly growing obesity rate in this impoverished area of the city. Thirty percent of South L.A. adults are obese compared with 19.1 percent of adults in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and 14.1 percent on the more affluent west side of town. This comes as little surprise when you consider that 73 percent of all restaurants in South L.A. are fast food compared with 42 percent in West Los Angeles. The moratorium will last for one year and is intended to attract other types of restaurants to an area desperately in need of healthier choices. The bill requires the signature of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to become law. The California Restaurant Association is considering a legal challenge to the city ordinance.
    As part of a special issue on food, Yes! Magazine profiles the Brazilian city of Belo, which has, by working with farmers and communities, put an end to hunger.
    “Belo [Brazil], a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system.
    The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.
    Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.”
« Back to Year of Plenty
You must be logged in to post comments.
Please create a profile or log in here.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)