Too many fat people in the world, too many poor fat people in the USA. America is one of the prized few countries where childhood obesity is correlated with poverty. Or at least with not being rich.
(man, my dog is cute)
Sooo what to do, what to do.....
ooooh pick me! pick me!
okay, yes, you, go ahead.
Alter the food stamps program to encourage consumption of healthier, low fat foods. People on food stamps do not get all of their food from the grocery store; rather, they get free food from the grocery store so now they can spend that money on something else (like, perhaps...McDonalds). But what if you could make it so that they didn't buy a McDonald's cheeseburger, and instead, they bought one of those healthy options (i never go to Mickey d's anymore so i actually have no idea what i'm talking about). But, you may ask, why get the healthy option when the fat one is so much more delicious? Because....the healthy option was redeemable with your food stamp card!
So heres the idea. Local and state governments should partner with restaurants and other dining establishments, hold them to a "healthy dining option" standard, and for restaurant items that live up to that standard, allow food stamps consumers to use their food stamps to purchase that item. For example -- a whole foods salad would be redeemable on food stamps (kind of absurd, since whole foods salads are insanely expensive). Or the McDonalds' fresh fruits and yogurts would be redeemable, or their healthy sandwich options. Like Arby's fresh sandwiches.
Eating healthy is expensive. I've been there. I am quite aware of how expensive it is to eat a)organic and b) enough healthy food to fill me up. Essentially, one ends up eating beans every single day of their life, and who in their right mind wants to do that? We weren't on food stamps, because we were intentionally trying to be poor (and who in their right mind wants to do that? yeah. right. www.jesuitvolunteercorps.org, thats who.), but IF we DID have food stamps, it certainly would have been nice if we could have gotten some prepared, healthy food on those stamps. As it was, we couldn't afford anything except beans and rice.
Right now, states and local govts should take advantage of this opportunity to combat childhood obesity and bring some revenue to restaurants offering healthy food items. This not only benefits food stamps users, but the population as a whole; as more restaurants started offering more healthy options, consumers (non-food stamp users) would have more healthy options to choose from.
