This week, Donald Trump, with support from roadkill eater and Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, announced that he was considering a ban on junk food for people who receive food stamps, which is now known as the SNAP program. Like many things the president does, it was met with confusion, support, and many people who are intellectually inept agreed with the same president who invited Clemson’s winning football team to the White House and served them McDonald’s. In fact, the president has a love affair with the chain and even cosplayed as a poor McDonald’s worker in his campaign for president last year.
Donald Trump just served fries and worked the drive-thru at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) October 20, 2024
pic.twitter.com/M5o5OM7i4r
The president also boasts about his love for fast food, but that does not keep him from using propaganda to further his campaign against the poor while making the rich even richer.
Many of Trump’s supporters feel like SNAP beneficiaries should not be allowed the same sh*tty diet as the commander-in-chief and are somehow under the impression that many SNAP beneficiaries are gaming the system and should get a job as if there are never poor people who are living paycheck to paycheck with empty cupboards. In fact, about one-third of SNAP households are households with income. Additionally, according to USDA, 41% of SNAP households have children. Speaking of McDonald’s, the company receives millions in corporate subsidies a year, while many of its employees, including full-time employees, are still unable to feed themselves without SNAP.
In fact, a great number of Walmart and McDonald’s employees are on food stamps. They can sell junk food; they just can’t eat it.
The term food desert describes a place where there is limited access to food, but alternatively, the phrase food swamp is also a term used for food insecurity. Most specifically, health foods, as food swamps are areas with a higher density of fast-food options, with Black and Hispanic populations more likely to live in these areas, which are also linked to higher rates of obesity. In many regions, what looks like competition is different stores owned by the same company; for instance, the Kroger company owns almost 20 chains. Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are owned by the same company, with the owner being sued for a rat-infested warehouse containing food and selling expired food in their stores.
Dollar stores often replace grocers with discounted prices, but they are also problematic because many of their employees receive government subsidies. They also employ fewer people than grocery stores, creating more unemployment and have also gross offenders of selling expired food. With more stores owned by the same companies, it also creates less competition and higher prices.
In a country where supermarket chains and stores are declining, for many people in food deserts, where SNAP beneficiaries are also heavily concentrated, fresh food is hard to come by, especially for those with limited transportation. With companies like McDonald’s targeting Black communities where fresh food is already scarce, it creates a hypocritical dynamic that the government supports companies that not only don’t pay their employees enough to make a living wage but that the food from companies those companies is not suitable for the very people in its target audience. If the food is not good enough for poor people to eat, then it is not suitable for anyone.
What once was the war on poverty has now become a war on the impoverished.
With the invention of Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen came a personified representation of the laziness of the impoverished, and most specifically, the narrative targeted Black people, even though the woman behind the moniker, Linda Taylor, was listed as white on a 1930 census. Taylor was born with darker hair and skin than the rest of her family members and was known to rely on her racial ambiguity for her disguises. According to the USDA, 41% of households that receive SNAP have children.
Society wants people on food stamps to eat better, just not better than them, and more importantly, the government supports companies that make this increasingly difficult.
There will always be opinions raised around poor people and their eating habits. If people on food stamps buy food that is too high quality, they are bilking the system; if they buy food that is low quality, they are bilking the system. Poverty is not the result of lack of work ethic, if it were there would not be single mothers working three jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck. Poverty is the result of hoarding resources by the rich. As more grocery store chains close or are bought out by other chains, consolidating the power and competitive pricing suffers, and so do consumers.
Y’all: “Poor ppl need to buy real food and NO JUNK, so SNAP shouldn’t allow chips or any candy, ever!”
— Adrienne | Creative Consultant and Soap Queen ???? (@brownandbella) February 19, 2025
*Sees ppl in Whole Foods buying steak, shrimp, ribs and lobster on SNAP*
Y’all: “Whole Foods RIB-EYE??? I can’t even afford that! STOP the poors from buying luxury food!” pic.twitter.com/wiifuvHJXZ
The vitriol lobbed at a single mother for wanting to buy her children a birthday cake is misdirected.
For most people, going to the grocery store and not having to worry about how much money you will spend is a simple luxury many will never know, and with this new administration, cake will be a luxury, too.
Food, unlike our administration, does not discriminate, if it is too unhealthy for poor people then it is too unhealthy for the rich.
