Improving the Nutritional Impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Perspectives from the Participants

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Being involved with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), both as a participant and as an employee that help/ encouraged elegiable applicants, I support this program and find it important to stay up-to date with as it is a government assistance program set to help low income invdividuals/families receive access to food. SNAP is in fact the largest federal food assistance program in the United States designed to “provide supplemental support to alleviate food insecurity and improve dietary intake.” Currently 1 in 7 Americans (47.6 million people) receive governmental support to purchase any kind of food as long as it is not alcohol, nutritional supplements, heated food or food served to eat on location. In recent years, it has been an ongoing discussion amongst policymakers, public health nutritionists and anti-hunger advocates to be engaged in how to modify SNAP policies to maximize nutritional implications for SNAP recipients. On the other hand, SNAP participants and low-income nonparticipants have not been contributing to this conversation, despite their key stakeholder interests. Therefore, this online study surveyed 387 individuals from Amazon Mechanical Turk, of whom 118 were SNAP beneficiaries and 269 food-insufficient but not enrolled in SNAP (nonparticipants), on their perspectives of proposed strategies to improve the nutritional impact of SNAP. The majority of all respondents (70%) believed the current benefit level was insufficient to afford a healthy diet. Most SNAP participants (76%) and nonparticipants (81%) supported coupling financial incentives for fruits and vegetables with restrictions for sugary beverages to be purchased with SNAP benefits. Participants were asked to choose from two hypothetical scenarios: 1) a SNAP program that combined healthy incentives and restrictions for sugary beverages (SNAP+), or 2) SNAP in its current form. From the whole sample, 67% of SNAP participants and 83% of nonparticipants chose the first scenario (healthier SNAP program). From the ones who initially chose SNAP in its current form, 68% of SNAP participants and 64% of nonparticipants would choose SNAP+ if paired with a 50% increase in profit revenue.  These results show overwhelming support from program participants and food-insufficient nonparticipants that encourages SNAP policies that facilitate the purchase of healthy foods and limit the purchase of unhealthy foods, especially sugary beverages. Therefore, the article concluded that such policies as these deserve to be studied in pilot projects and may help to improve diet-related health disparities in this vulnerable population. This tactic should be used more frequently to be able to voice the opinion of those who are directly influenced by such policy decisions.

Reference: Leung, C. W., Musicus, A., Willett, W. C., & Rimm, E. B. (2016). Improving the Nutritional Impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Perspectives from the Participants. The FASEB Journal, 30(1 Supplement), 1152-11.

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