Do Food Stamps make people fat?

How about just paying for unprocessed real food? Fruits, veggies, Hawaiian Punch.

Do Food Stamps Make People Fat?

The government shouldn’t subsidize soda and candy, which have no nutritional benefit whatever.

By Allysia Finley, WSJ

April 20, 2025 2:33 pm ET

American waistlines have ballooned in tandem with government welfare. Is there a connection? Studies show people on food stamps eat less healthily than other low-income Americans.

Now governors in Indiana, Arkansas and Idaho want to conduct real-world experiments by asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture for waivers to exclude soda, candy and other sweets from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—i.e., food stamps.

Cue the protests from so-called antihunger groups on the left, which have made common cause with the candy and beverage industries. In their telling, it’s unfair to “punish” lower-income folks by barring them from using government handouts to purchase sugary treats.

But nobody is being punished. Recipients could still buy a Kit Kat or a Coke with cash. The states’ experiment will test whether the restrictions might nudge recipients to eat better. Would candy and soda manufacturers be screaming from the rooftops if they didn’t think this might plausibly be a result?

Soda and sweets aren’t the only causes of obesity, but they are major sources of empty calories. The stated purpose of the food stamp program is to support “nutrition.” Are Skittles nutritious?

Alcoholic drinks, which you can’t buy with food stamps, at least have some demonstrated cardiovascular benefits. Soft drinks and candy have no health upside. They create pleasure by triggering a release of dopamine in the brain, but this can lead to overindulgence and cravings when the sugar high ebbs. They can thus lead people to consume more calories than they otherwise would.

Call it a diet-multiplier effect. A soda once in awhile won’t give you diabetes or pile on the pounds, but having one every day can add up. While such ultraprocessed foods aren’t literally “poison,” as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls them, they aren’t good for you. Why should government pay for them?

Democrats deceptively labeled food stamps the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” in 2008 to increase public support. But for far too many Americans, food stamps aren’t supplementing earned income. They are supplementing other government programs.

The U.S. boasts more than a dozen “nutrition,” programs including free school lunches and the WIC program for low-income pregnant women, infants and children. The Biden administration even allowed states to spend federal Medicaid dollars on “nutritious” meal deliveries. This seems a tacit admission that food stamps aren’t paying for nutritious foods.

Studies bear that out. More food-stamp money is spent on soda and sweets than fruits, vegetables, eggs, pasta, beans and rice combined, according to a report by the Foundation for Government Accountability. Sweetened beverages and candy alone account for 11% of food-stamp spending. A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined diet quality of food-stamp beneficiaries and people of similar incomes who didn’t receive the handouts from 2003 to 2014. Nonbeneficiaries ate better than beneficiaries, and their diets improved more over time.

USDA studies show that working-age adults on food stamps consume more added sugars and refined grains, and less fruit and vegetables, than nonrecipients with similar demographics. They are also more likely to have severe hypertension and low levels of “good” cholesterol. Women on food stamps in particular have much higher obesity and diabetes rates.

Does this prove that food stamps make people fat? Well, no. People who subsist on government payments may be less health-conscious. On the other hand, it’s plausible that when government gives people more money to spend, they buy more junk. (Food stamps may also free up more money in household budgets to buy tobacco, alcohol and other unhealthy products.)

America doesn’t have a “hunger” problem. About three-quarters of adult food-stamp beneficiaries are overweight or obese. Only 3% are underweight. More Americans of all income levels die from illnesses caused by overindulgence than by hunger. Yet the government keeps subsidizing more people to eat more junk.

Over the past 15 years, food-stamp enrollment has swelled as eligibility standards eased through waivers of work requirements while Congress and the USDA boosted payments. There are now 50% more people on food stamps than in 2008, and payments have nearly tripled.

In 2021 the Biden administration boosted allotments by 27% on average based on the rationale that—get this—Americans need to consume more calories because they are fatter. The costs of poor diet are socialized through government and private insurance. Taxpayers pick up the tab via Medicaid, and healthy people have to pay higher insurance premiums.

Zooming out, the bigger problem is that government encourages indulgent and indolent behavior. You don’t have to work to qualify for most welfare programs, and if you work too much, you lose eligibility. Members of both parties lack the appetite to shrink bloated entitlements. Democrats are protesting even modest trims to Medicaid spending on able-bodied adults.

No single program is to blame for the government’s $36.7 trillion debt. Spending adds up like calories and pounds, and America would be healthier and more prosperous if Washington went on a diet.