Electronic music artist Moby is under fire from fellow leftists after suggesting that poor people who use food stamps should be barred from buying food that isn’t “healthy,” and that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or, SNAP) should limit users to purchasing “cheap, healthy foods like beans, vegetables, fruit, and whole grains.”
“Right now, a congressional arm-wrestling match is pitting those who want to preserve funding for SNAP against those who want to gut it,” Moby wrote in a column for The Wall Street Journal.
“As I can attest from my childhood experience, SNAP really does help feed poor people, and no one wants to return to the days when America turned a blind eye to hunger,” he continued. “But it also puts a lot of unhealthful food on America’s plate. Its costs are huge, as are the added costs of treating diabetes, hypertension and other illnesses that poor eating habits cause.”
SNAP is meant to be a healthy food program, supplementary to state-based welfare programs. SNAP recipients can only use the funds to purchase fresh meat and produce as a condition of receiving an extended food benefit from the federal government, but many people still use it to purchase calorie-heavily foods like potatoes.
But what a poor person should eat should be up to the individual using the food stamps. Just because someone is poor doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t make their own decisions, or that they are somehow less capable of feeding their family than a musician who peaked sometime in the early 2000s.
And the internet, of course, reminded Moby that he may not, in fact, know what’s best for poor people because he happens to vote Democrat and cash million dollar checks.
moby: we are all made of stars
also moby: life should be more difficult for poor people https://t.co/uxA6JXOCOm
— jon hendren (@fart) April 10, 2018
dear moby
this is a bad and classist opinion
other people’s bodies are none of yr business
-jss https://t.co/bMpuF9xVpc— jes skolnik / texas calboy (@modernistwitch) April 10, 2018
Some even got very personal.
didn’t realize food stamps could be used to buy Moby albums pic.twitter.com/o4ziTE1Tds
— Kevin Nguyen (@knguyen) April 10, 2018
In fairness to the poor people, Moby did once try to pass a measure in Los Angeles that would have required shelter animals to be fed vegan diets. So at least the poor people still get meat.
Congress is considering an extension for the SNAP program. Although the program has been the subject of much deliberation, it has never not been renewed.