Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program Money Spent on Junk Food

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-23/look-how-much-junk-food-bought-taxpayer-funded-food-stamps

The USDA study:  http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/foods-typically-purchased-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap-households

An interesting study.  There is a value judgment involved but that is not the point of this blog entry.  The purpose is to illustrate the information derived from following the money in a traceable audit trail in a situation where IdentifiedGovernmentFunds are directly related to SNAP recipients and the expenditure of those funds as a medium of exchange in a controlled food purchase program that can be investigated in a gross analysis.

The scenario is similar to giving a prepaid debit card to someone and having the report of how that debit card is spent sent to the donor of the card having the right to know the recipient of the transaction.

Key Findings:

Differences in the expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households were relatively limited, regardless of how data were categorized.

• About 40 cents of every food purchase dollar was spent on basic items like meat, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread.
  
• Another 20 cents was spent on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.
  
• The remaining 40 cents was spent on a variety of items such as cereal, prepared foods, other dairy products, rice, beans, and other cooking ingredients.
  
• The top 10 summary categories (Table 1) and top 7 commodities by expenditure were the same for SNAP and non-SNAP households, although ranked in slightly different orders.