Foodstamps and foodies

A friend on facebook just updated their status to say:

justg [sic] watched my tax dollars pay for a month's food stamps worth of overpriced, organic junk food at EarthFare, ugh... the system is broken!

It's funny because only a couple of days ago did I find a blog discussion on that very notion... folks using food stamps to purchase foodie foods. From The Daily Dish:

Jennifer Bleyer mocks young people using food stamps to purchase foodie products. Elizabeth Nolan Brown shrugs:

People are always railing, of course, about how people on food stamps don’t buy enough healthy food. But heaven forbid the food they buy is too healthy, or healthy and also outside the mainstream. It’s absurd. Fresh produce is a luxury? Soy protein (which costs about the same as meat) the height of libertine-ism? Not to mention that things such as Chinese gourd and coconut milk are the very kind of corner-store staples in ethnic neighborhoods that often sell these sorts of foods cheaper than mainstream varieties...

Dreher comes around:

I confess I did flinch at the idea of these people spending their taxpayer-provided food dollars at Whole Paycheck. And that made me realize that I have this unrecognized prejudice that the poor -- meaning those who qualify for food stamps -- must be condemned to eat cheap, bad food as the price of receiving state charity. That's not right, is it? I mean, why wouldn't I care if Joe Bob bought a box of Velveeta with his food stamps, but spending that money on a wedge of triple creme Brie rankles?

For me it's a no-brainer, while price doesn't exactly equate with healthfulness of foods, it can be an indicator as does location, in the case of my friend Earthfare. In the long run, if folks are spending their subsidies at places such as Earthfare it means two things -- their purchasing power decreases which automatically limits portion sizes, and the quality of the food items - and yes healthfulness - increases. In the long run that means a possible lower likelihood of obesity and a possible downward shift in medical costs.

Food for thought?