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Over the course of 2018, top scholars will debate on these pages some of the most pressing issues facing low-income Americans today. Policies aimed at reducing poverty and increasing opportunity for low-income Americans will be the focus. Both sides of an issue will be presented in a series of point/counterpoint essays in the hopes of opening minds and advancing discussion. We hope you enjoy it and we welcome respectful feedback in the comments section.
Nearly 43 million Americans receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) benefits, making it a source of considerable focus for those looking to reform programs for low-income people. With the program only nominally committed to nutrition, some experts say restricting unhealthy food and beverage choices — namely sugar-sweetened beverages — is a good place to start.
In this installment of AEI’s Poverty and Social Policy Debate Series, Jerry Mande, former Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety at the USDA and current professor at Tufts University, will debate Craig Gundersen, Professor in Agriculture Policy at the University of Illinois, on the merits of restrictions on sugary beverages in SNAP. This is the second round of their exchange. You can read Part 1 here. You can find the entirety of their debate, as well as sources for the various studies they cite, here.
Jerry Mande:
First, we owe Dr. Craig Gundersen our gratitude. SNAP has remained strong despite frequent attacks, thanks in large part to the persistence of anti-hunger advocates like Dr. Gundersen. However, that single-mindedness is misplaced in this debate. Restricting SSBs is a means of strengthening SNAP by bolstering its nutritional integrity, improving the health of participants, reducing fiscal pressure on Medicaid, and thus making the program less vulnerable to criticism.
The proposal to restrict SSBs was not born from mere “perceptions,” as Dr. Gundersen argues. After nine months of careful deliberation over the research, the Bipartisan Policy Center SNAP task force came out unanimously in favor of an SSB restriction. The 13-member task force was deeply troubled by two facts: the first being that soft drinks are the number-one purchase in terms of share of expenditures by SNAP households, with sweetened beverages accounting for 9% of spending; the second being the undisputed association between SSBs and obesity, diabetes, and coronary heart disease — which together are the number one leading cause of death and disability in the United States and a major driver of rising health costs.
Food security isn’t the same as good nutrition. For most struggling families, food insecurity manifests itself in an insidious way: an excess of calories with a lack of quality nutrients.
Drawing parallels between Trump’s Harvest Box scheme and the proposed SSB restriction is a play out of Trump’s distraction playbook. In its most recent budget, the Trump administration levied more than $200 billion dollars in cuts to SNAP. We, on the other hand, strongly oppose any changes that would reduce the value of SNAP benefits or make them more difficult for qualified individuals to access.
Dr. Gundersen correctly underscores SNAP’s success in reducing food insecurity. Indeed, SNAP is tremendously successful at easing the financial burden of obtaining food for low-income families. Unfortunately, food security isn’t the same as good nutrition. For most struggling families, food insecurity manifests itself in an insidious way: an excess of calories with a lack of quality nutrients. SNAP is a “Nutrition” program, and it is not improving diets. Given that sugar-sweetened beverages do not, under any circumstances, contribute to a balanced diet, they have no place in a nutrition program.
Lastly, Dr. Gundersen is concerned, rightly so, about preserving choice for SNAP families. What he fails to address is that SNAP participants’ choices are already under assault from billions of marketing dollars spent by the food and beverage industry. We should support SNAP participants’ dignity and autonomy by helping them stand up to a toxic food environment and corporate influence, and do what the overwhelming majority of citizens (including SNAP participants) support — restrict SSBs and increase incentives for foods that promote health.
Craig Gundersen:
I wish to begin by thanking AEI for asking me to participate in this dialogue and Jerry Mande for his respectful comments. In some cases, these dialogues do create opportunities to bring some form of consensus on an issue but, alas, in this case, I think we must remain divided for two main reasons.
First, we seem to be drawing conclusions about the efficacy of SNAP based on two quite different sets of research. As noted in my earlier response, the papers cited in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s report are taken from research that uses fundamentally wrong assumptions (e.g., assuming that SNAP participation is randomly assigned) and, consequently, uses outdated and, given the questions being posed, incorrect statistical models. In contrast, respected researchers on SNAP have relied on sophisticated studies that show that, after controlling for the non-random selection into SNAP and the fungibility of SNAP benefits, SNAP participants are not more likely to be obese than similar, eligible non-participants and, in some studies, actually have lower probabilities of being obese.
Given that we are looking at two different research areas, it is not surprising that we reach different conclusions about the efficacy of SNAP and the need for restrictions. It is also telling that while there were some people on the BPC task force that have a research background, none have published on SNAP. It isn’t clear why researchers who have done credible work on SNAP were not asked to be part of the task force.
I firmly resist calls to just single out low-income Americans for patronizing and condescending restrictions.
Second, we have different perspectives about whether SNAP recipients should be treated differently than others in our country. A central reason for the success of SNAP is that it treats those who are going through tough times with dignity and provides them with a sense of normalcy, from the grocery store checkout line to the kitchen at home with their families. Mr. Mande and others want to impose restrictions on these struggling families in ways that they would never do to, say, farmers receiving subsidies from the USDA, Social Security recipients, or participants in Medicare. They do this despite the fact that, by their own admission, all these other groups also face similar influences which may lead to poor dietary intakes. I firmly resist their calls to just single out low-income Americans for patronizing and condescending restrictions.
While we are unlikely to ever reach an agreement on restrictions on SNAP recipients, I do agree with Mr. Mande when he notes that funding for SNAP should not be reduced. I presume he, like me, would encourage even higher spending on SNAP. Thus, I urge him to join others and myself in support of three recent proposals to increase SNAP benefit levels. With respect to the wisdom of increasing SNAP benefits, I hope we can agree!
Jerry Mande is a former Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety at the USDA and a current professor at Tufts University. Craig Gundersen is a Professor in Agriculture Policy at the University of Illinois.
In the second and final round of this debate, Jerry Mande and Craig Gundersen continue to discuss the merits of restrictions on sugary beverages in SNAP.
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