Group Says Food Stamps Don’t Assure Good Diet

Poor Americans have to pay much more--26% to 54%--than what they receive under the food stamp program to ensure they have a nutritious diet, an anti-hunger group said Friday.

The Agriculture Department assumes low-income people should supplement food stamps by spending about 30% of their income on food, but Michael Lemov, executive director of the Food Research and Action Center, told a news conference that their incomes are too low to fill the gap between food costs and food stamp benefits.

“It’s no supplemental program,” Lemov said. “People have to live on it.”

FRAC surveyed food costs in seven metropolitan areas: Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The group found that buying a week’s worth of food for a family of four--based on Agriculture’s “thrifty food plan” that outlines a low-cost, nutrious diet--costs an average of $103.22 for national or name brand foods. That is 54% higher than the $67 provided weekly for food stamp recipients.

Generic or store brands averaged $84.59, or 26% more than the food stamp allotment.

The $12-billion food stamp program provides coupons that can be redeemed in stores for food for about 20 million Americans, more than half of whom are children.

Farm legislation passed by the House would increase benefits slightly, to restore some cuts made over the last few years. The Senate bill includes no increases.

Lemov called the House-passed increases an “improvement” but insufficient to “close this huge gap” between economic theory and “economic reality.”