Replace Food Stamps With Food Boxes?

I have mixed feeling about this proposal. I remember back when actual food was distributed for poor families, and it was called “Commodities”. The food that was handed out was basic things like flour, cornmeal,white rice, powdered milk, and canned USDA foods like canned beef and/or pork, peanut butter, and a loaf of cheddar cheese.
My parents had house rentals, and most of the time, when the renters moved, they left behind the bags of flour, cornmeal, and powdered milk, and usually the rice, too, although it did get used up better than the other items did.
It sounds like this is a similar program that they are proposing to do now, and even less people actually cook with these basic items than they did back in the 1950’s when they gave out the commodities.

The other side of that is that when I go to the store, I often see people with carts full of snack foods and soda pop, and they are raising their children with this very unhealthy food; so I totally agree that the foods that can be purchased with EBT should be limited better than it is.
I think the idea of giving out actual food is good, but in practice, I just do not see it working out well.

And then, there is my own perspective on this , as a food stamp (SNAP/EBT) user. We buy just the opposite of most EBT users. I shop for fresh vegetables, fruits, and healthy dairy items like milk, cheese, and yogurt. We can’t afford a lot of meat, but I shop the sales and we have mark-down items and chicken mostly.
If they hand out big bags of corn meal , white rice, and white flour, we do not use that either; so it would be as much of a waste for us as it would for the families that don’t cook regular meals.

We also have food banks here, and sometimes they do have fresh veggies in the summer; but most of what they hand out is bread and pastry items.
Rescue missions could certainly use the extra food though, and since they operate regular kitchens and cook actual meals, I think that this would be a great idea to hand out extra foods to the food banks and rescue missions.

It is definitely something that needs to be changed from the way it works right now; but I don’t know if just handing out the food will work either.
One thing it might help to stop is people “selling” their food stamp allowance for drugs or alcohol.

 

Actually, getting the commodities, it was from extra food that had been basically bought from farmers, because the farms were government subsidized.
We still have that happening with many farms; so the food that would be handed out would be the food that the government had excess of stored away, and not food that was purchased from stores, according to what I have read about the new SNAP proposal.

Getting it would probably not be any easier for elderly people who have trouble getting to the store, because on the day you had to go to the warehouse for the food, there would be long waiting lines, and they would also need help carrying out the boxes of food.
I can remember standing in line for over an hour , waiting for the commodities to be handed out, and for elderly people, it would be almost impossible unless they have a better way of distribution.

When Bobby and I were first married, and he was managing the little rescue mission in Charlotte, NC; we went each week with the little Ford pickup and got food from the local food bank. We had to use the big flat shopping carts like they have at Costco.
Some of the food was given away, and some we had to pay for, but it was much cheaper than if we had bought it at the store.
They had special days that were just for the missions and church food banks to come and pick up food for the week; but it still was an effort to get it all loaded on the pallet, and then into the back of the truck.
Of course, we were getting food for the whole rescue mission, and not just a family, so we had to load a lot more than just a regular SNAP family would need to get.