Ban Soda From Food Stamp Program?

You may have heard about New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg recent proposal to ban the city’s residents from purchasing soda with food stamps.

A lively debate happened on the topic over at Change.org. Some proponents argued thatbanning soda purchases for poor food stamp recipients was a good thing. Other advocatesargued that it wasn’t a fight worth fighting for, but rather, that we should work towards encouraging, perhaps even implementing incentives for food stamp recipients to make better choices.

I think Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts would be well directed at improving food stamp recipient’s access to real food: be it inner city farmer’s market vendors accepting food stamps, or implementing incentives on bringing grocery stores to food deserts, which are innumerable across the American landscape.

If you want proof of this, drive through neighborhoods like east Oakland or the Bayview district in San Francisco where you’d be hard pressed to find affordable and healthy foods, not to mention diapers.

What do you think about this hot topic? Do you agree with Mayor Bloomberg with banning soda from the food stamp program?

Soda aisle photo credit via Creative Commons 2.0: Violentz