Food Stamp Fatties

Today I experienced an intense inner burning feeling (and not of the Monistat variety, but thanks for asking - I'm touched by your concern. And creeped out. ) I discovered that my friend who makes just shy of six figures is, through a quirk of our legal system, eligible for food stamps AND is using them. Because "hey, if the government's just giving them away for free..." When I asked him if he had any reservations about the arrangement he replied, "Well, I've heard that food stamps make you fat."

Moral blindness aside, he posed an interesting question. A lot of people I know assume that a higher usage of food stamps correlates with a higher BMI. There is an established link between a low socioeconomic status and a high BMI. So it stands to reason that if the poor are the ones using the food stamps (a-HEM!) that food stamp users would have a higher BMI. Not true. No study (and they have been done going back as far as the '70s) has shown a significant correlation. Although in typical numbers-tell-no-lies-but-reporters-sure-do fashion, different articles reported the same findings - an insignificant 0.3 rise in BMI for women on food stamps and none for men - with completely opposing titles. "Food Stamps and Obesity: Ironic Twist" goes head-to-head with "Hunger Hysteria: Food Stamps and BMI"

All of which raises an interesting question: should food stamps be restricted to certain foods? Virginia thinks so. Michigan does too although they favor the carrot to the stick approach. While I'm all for a twinkie-free world populated instead with organic pineapples (and please-oh-please Carmen Miranda!), aside from the obvious few, most foods are hard to categorize as "good" or "bad." I mean, even Cookie Monster knows that cookies are a "sometimes food" and he's a muppet who literally has fluff for brains. Isn't it a basic human right to choose what goes into your mouth? Even if you're living on charity?

What do you think? If you can't use food stamps to buy booze, should you be able to at least buy the Jell-O to make the shots?