U.S. Government Subsidizes Healthy Food
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Every year, the U.S. federal government subsidizes America’s junk food habit with bazillions of dollars in tax breaks & subsidies.
But today, in a shocking turn of events, the USDA has announced the creation of a new “healthy eating” program.
Or, in other words… The U.S. government is subsidizing healthy food.
The $20 million program is being tested in Hampden County, Mass. and is designed to encourage healthy eating among low income families.
Specifically, The Healthy Incentives Pilot will enroll 7,500 randomly selected SNAP (aka Food Stamps) households to receive the HIP incentives.
For every dollar that participants spend on fruits and vegetables using their SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, 30 cents will be added to their benefit balance – thus cutting the cost of fruits and vegetables by almost one-third.
And if this Dutch research is correct, this cost cutting measure will result in the higher consumption of fruits & vegetables.
And to make things even better, this program will operate in tandem with the Food Bank Farm program already being sponsored by the Food bank of Western Mass. (The FB Farm program promotes local food consumption)
Conclusion
This program seems pretty great to me.
- It reduces the cost of fruits & vegetables
- It increases the consumption of fruits & vegetables
- It increases the consumption of local fruits & vegetables
The only drawback seems to be the $20 million.
Maybe the USDA should raise the cash by slashing some of the current USDA junk food subsidies.
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