The rub gets to be that many juices are "sugary drinks" too. Cranberry juice comes to mind . . . they add sugar, or corn syrup, to get rid of the tartness of the cranberries, along with apple juice, and a couple other flavors, from concentrates, of course, in the final product that's on the shelf.
Challenge gets to be if you limit the charity to raw food items, how can you be sure the recipient has the necessary means to prepare the food for consumption? So processed, ready to heat and eat, food has to be part of what is allowed to be purchased if you give someone what is, for all intents and purposes, a debit card. Are you going to prepare and deliver 3 meals a day to a family receiving the charity? Are you going to come up with a culture appropriate food basket that gets delivered once a week instead of putting money on a debit card? How do you know, and ensure, that the family has the means of preserving food once it is cooked, or the pots and pans necessary to cook the food, or an appliance to cook the food?
You can buy a burrito from the cooler at your local 7Eleven with a SNAP card, but if you heat it up in the microwave on your way to the register, you can't use the SNAP card to purchase the burrito anymore. That's truly the level of absurdity within the current "rules" governing the program. So you buy it first and then pop it into the microwave . . . problem solved, right?
And this is only the start of a nearly endless list on why its a bad idea for the federal government to be in charge of distributing individual charity. There is simply no means of ensuring that the money spent for the program isn't lost to fraud, waste, abuse, and that it actually provides access only to those truly unable to purchase food to feed themselves and not also to the individuals who are working "off the books", or engaged in nefarious activities with no traceable income, who are just gaming the system because they qualify under the income rules put into place to ensure that those who need help are helped.
Any government sponsored charity program is going to have a certain amount of fraud built into it, no matter how hard one tries to eliminate it, because qualification for the charity has to be defined and anyone who meets that definition qualifies for the charity. Government must treat each and every person the same, it may not discriminate. No matter what "safeguards" you build into the system, they'll be bypassed in pursuit of "free" money from the government. The only question then becomes what level of fraud, waste, and abuse is permitted to exist within the charity program because the benefits to those who need the charity outweigh the amount of waste, fraud and abuse within the program. 10%, 25%, 50%? I'm not trying to be cynical here . . . I'm truly interested in discussion.
