Letter to the editor: Making SNAP healthier will save lives
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Make America Healthy Again seems to be starting. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is making moves to eliminate sugary foods and soda pop/energy drinks from the SNAP program.
Numerous Republican-led states also are taking steps to eliminate unhealthy, sugary items from the program. These are foods that can lead to obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, tooth decay, heart disease, poor bone health and other chronic diseases.
When I worked at a Dollar General in my hometown, I saw a lot of customers loading up their shopping carts with soda pop, potato chips, ice cream and other treats and paying with SNAP cards. If these moves to ban such purchases from SNAP are successful, companies such as Frito-Lay, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Hostess, Red Bull and Hershey would take a very hard hit on their sales to these Dollar General, or “Sugar General,” stores.
Small towns with a large low-income population are stuck with these kind of stores and companies that believe in profit over people.
I am glad RFK Jr. is starting his MAHA program. It was sad to see that many of my customers were suffering from all these health issues. Hopefully, Gov. Josh Shapiro will also sign a bill to ban such purchases that are slowly killing our hometown folks. Let’s put people over profit.
James Illinsky
Vandergrift