New Bill To Prevent Food Stamp Users From Buying Junk Food: Tennessee Legislators Want Strict Law

Tennessee legislators are preparing to introduce a new bill that will prevent the food stamp users from buying soda, ice cream, and other junk foods. The bill was mainly proposed by the state GOP Rep. Sheila Butt. The food stamp users avail the government benefits while purchasing a list of grocery items.

On Thursday the bill was tabled by the state Representative Sheila Butt.  Sheila Butt requests permission from the USDA to prohibit a number of items, like soda, ice cream, cookies and others. USDA is the key federal agency that monitors this program.

Sources from the NBC affiliate WCNC report that Butt wants the food stamp users should not buy the junk foods using the government benefits. She even wants to impose penalties on those retailers who sell banned items to the people who are under the SNAP. SNAP means the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and it is also called food stamps.

She clearly utters that any individual or businessman will face the penalty if they want to violate the measure. The offenders would be fined $1,000 for the first offense. For the second offense, they have to pay $2,500 and $5,000 for the third offense. The whole process will be monitored within a five-year time frame.

Previously New York City, Maine, and Minnesota also tried to create one such bill. They even tried to limit the food items that the SNAP recipients actually buy. But the federal government rejected the proposals as no additional restriction is allowed on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

 A recent survey report from the USDA reveals that the food stamp recipients spend 9.3 percent of their total grocery budget on soda than on bread, fruit, and other food items. The survey includes 26 million US families. Sources of UPI clearly reveal the whole story.

Sheila Butt also opined that a huge amount of money from the taxpayers is utilized every year to provide the facility to the SNAP recipients. She even uttered that when a SNAP recipient purchases soda, ice cream, cookies, then the recipient actually promotes high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and other health problems. In a word, taxpayers are actually subsidizing an unhealthy lifestyle for the users of food stamps.

More than one million people in Tennessee were distributed the benefits of SNAP in November last year. The total amount of the aid was more than $ 134 million. It is a true fact that the poor families use food stamps to purchase sugary drinks and unhealthy foods.

Even USDA also understands the fact. The US Department of Agriculture is encouraging people to buy healthy food items. The department wants to create more awareness among the people to limit the purchase of the unhealthy food items.