[Maru]

Originally Posted by jaxie

This seems to be taking money from the poor and choosing food for them. With all the canned food suggested it doesn't sound particularly nutritional either.

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It's infantilizing. I don't have a huge amount more to say about than that. Benefits should be paid in cash / by bank transfer, I don't even agree with the idea of food stamps. If parents on benefits aren't feeding their children properly with the money they get, then they are being neglectful, and that's a whole separate issue that isn't going to be solved by cutting their money and sending them a crate of carrots.

It's not any different than a food bank. SNAP is temporary food assistance, it's not a luxury meal service.

They still get a portion of the money, but they're cutting the costs of the program and making sure there are nutritional options included (as well as supporting local businesses which is nice). It's in idea stages now, but it'd have to figure in some preferences and things like food sensitivities/allergies in the long haul to really work.

I think the forcing of choices is a great idea, especially for children. Parents selecting Captain Crunch as their breakfast and dinner is not only a stupid idea, it's incredibly harmful to their health. I know parents who raised their kids on junk.. almost all of them ended up with learning disabilities, ADHD, all sorts of mental and physical problems. I see that as passing one parent's hardship from them to another... and they don't think they're doing anything wrong, but that's because the problems aren't immediately noticeable until years later, so they think it's just their "terrible luck". I personally think a lot of it comes down to diet.

It also solves a few problems actually. Maybe they didn't know how to cook meals or they don't know how to eat correctly. Perhaps it could be modified so they received the ingredients for a meal for example, by a subscription service, govt subsidized or fully paid in (similar to the school lunch program). Actually, those services are quite good. They also have food services here that the school, prisons, jails, etc share, and they're not terrible actually... so I think tasty options are possible, especially when meal delivery/grocery delivery becomes mainstream (it's getting there in major cities...)

There are people who even if you give these benefits to them, they take it to the drug store, either because of transportation hardship (common in places like Baltimore, etc) or because they're lazy. And buying food there is 2-6x the normal cost and it ends up not meeting the value per $ anyway. So at least this ensures they get the value in food that was factored in.