No More Subsidies for Junk Food
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
May 7, 2023
Wall Street Journal
Though SNAP is meant to supplement nutrition, more than 20% of all program spending goes to unhealthy food and drink. Taxpayers are projected to spend $240 billion on junk food, with more than $60 billion going exclusively to soda, over the next decade.…
This subsidization of junk food is fueling American health crises. More than 40% of U.S. adults are obese, and roughly half have diabetes or prediabetes. These diseases can be debilitating…. That SNAP plays a role in their spread is immoral, irresponsible and reprehensible.
Thankfully, this isn’t a partisan issue…. In 2013 progressive mayors advocated a federal pilot program to test approaches “limiting SNAP’s subsidization of products, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, that are contributing to obesity”.…
I look forward to [aligning] SNAP benefits with the long-accepted standards of America’s other major nutrition programs: the National School Lunch Program and [WIC]. My coming bill would explicitly exclude soda and prepared desserts from SNAP, reorienting the program toward healthy food…and beverages like milk and pure fruit juice.
[T]here is nothing compassionate or responsible about spending taxpayer dollars on empty calories that contribute to health crises. If Democrats won’t take my word for it, they should take that of their own administration. “The House and Senate,” [Agriculture Secretary] Vilsack wrote in 2018, “should officially make diet quality a core SNAP objective, like fiscal integrity and food insecurity are now”….
