Food Stamp Bill Madness

I'm usually adverse to doing political pieces, but as this is somewhat relevant to my line of work, I should say a few things.  
    Two years ago, there was some shouting going on over a bill that would make illegal for people to use food stamp to buy junk food.  A few weeks ago, it was brought back up for discussion.  

Yes, obesity is a problem, yes there are people who abuse the system (such a lazy customer perfectly capable of walking using one of the scooters meant for elderly people who really needed it), and yes people do eat too much junk food in this country.  But this bill is as stupid as the utterly ridiculous law in either Connecticut or Massachusetts (I forget which) that banned school bake sales; both of them are unworkable cure-alls for a problem that has more than one contributing factor. 
       When this issue first came up in the spring of 2013, I remember Chef speaking about it.  One of my classmates then said, "Good, people shouldn't be allowed to use their food stamps to buy junk food."  I just couldn't believe that someone would be that judgmental. 

My mother told me two stories on this topic.  The first one was from a column that Ann Landers did many years ago.  Someone wrote to her expressing his annoyance at two women; one used food stamps to buy a cake, the other used them to buy a bag of shrimp.  Landers decided to let her readers handle that issue.  And it was a good thing she did that because this turned out to be a classic case of Things-Aren't-Always-What-They-Look-Like.  As it happened both women read Landers' column. It turned out that the women buying the cake had a twelve-year-old daughter who was dying of cancer, this particular birthday may as well be her last.  And the women wanted to get something nice that she knew the girl would enjoy.  The second woman said that she usually bought cheap food with her food stamps, but for this one particular special occasion had decided to bring a treat.  

The other story involves a woman whom my family used to go to church with when I was a little girl.  She helped poor women buy teaching them how to use their food stamps to buy good food.  She taught them how to read labels, understand the nutritional value of food, etc., and she did so in a very kind and loving way.  

What the people pushing for the Food Stamp Bill are saying is, "We're smarter than you, you should listen to us."  And no one is doing anything like what the woman from church did all those years ago.  I agree that obesity is a serious problem, but there are so many factors contributing to the high rates of obesity in this country that introducing a bill that is meant to be a cure-all is inevitably going to backfire one way or another.  And it is also simply adding to the problems the poor already face instead of fixing them.