Food stamps don't alter kids' sugary drink choices

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Despite hopes that the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can steer people toward healthier eating choices, there's no evidence the program currently influences - for better or worse - how many sugary drinks kids consume, according to a new study.

When children from families participating in the federal assistance program for poor families, commonly known as food stamps, were compared to peers not in SNAP, there was no significant difference in how much milk, soda and fruit juice the kids drank.

The findings don't mean that banning the use of food stamps to buy sweetened beverages, as some have proposed, wouldn't cut down on their consumption.

But the results do suggest at least that having food stamps doesn't encourage families with kids to buy more unhealthy drinks, according to the report in the August issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

In short, "SNAP does not affect beverage consumption among low-income children," said Meenakshi Fernandes, the study's author and a senior analyst at the health and policy research organization Abt Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

SNAP provides - on average - about $284 per month for people with low incomes to use at grocery stores on food. Purchases of alcohol, tobacco and other non-food items are not permitted.

In 2010, New York City attempted to add sugary drinks to the banned-items list, arguing that sweetened drinks are helping to spur the obesity epidemic, which disproportionately affects poorer households (see Reuters story of October 8, 2010 at http://reut.rs/NaVBqA).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, denied the city permission to implement its proposed pilot project in 2011.

That, however, has not stopped other proposals for limiting soda consumption on public health grounds.

Read More: Chicago Tribune


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