NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children whose families are on food stamps are only as expected to be overweight and portly as other low-income youth, a new investigate suggests.
Researchers found bad children tend to have diets high in processed meats, jam-packed fat and sweetened drinks and low in whole grains and fruits and vegetables – regardless of either they accept sovereign nourishment assistance.
The Food Stamp Program, now famous as a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), places few restrictions on a form of groceries people can buy regulating food stamps. That has led to regard that a module isn’t doing adequate to inspire healthy eating, generally among immature people.
One news estimated that in 2011 alone, roughly $4 billion of SNAP advantages were used to squeeze sodas and other soothing drinks.
“The loyal vigilant of a module was to yield as most optimal nourishment as probable to a people who are in a program,†pronounced Dr. Jonathan Shenkin, a health process researcher from Boston University and a pediatric dentist in Maine.
Shenkin, who wasn’t concerned in a new study, is a proponent of tighter restrictions on a forms of products SNAP advantages can be used to squeeze – or, during least, improved preparation for food stamp users about healthy choices.
The new investigate enclosed about 5,200 low-income kids and teenagers who were surveyed about their diets between 1999 and 2008 as partial of a long-term inhabitant health and nourishment study.
Between one-quarter and one-third of those children were partial of households now receiving SNAP benefits. To qualify, a family contingency be vital during 130 percent of a sovereign misery turn or next – equal to an income of about $2,400 per month for a family of 4 in 2011.
About 19 percent of kids on SNAP were overweight and another 18 percent were obese, identical to a suit of low-income children not on sovereign nourishment assistance who were heavy.
Both groups of immature people ate reduction than a endorsed volume of whole grains, fruits and vegetables – only one portion per day or fewer of any – and some-more processed meat, sweetened beverages and jam-packed fat, researchers led by Cindy Leung from a Harvard School of Public Health in Boston found. There was no disproportion in their altogether calorie intake.
Compared to children not on SNAP, those with a additional nourishment assistance consumed some-more high-fat dairy products and sweetened drinks and ate fewer nuts and legumes.
More than 47 million Americans were on SNAP as of late 2012, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The low intake of healthful food among children participating in SNAP represents a poignant missed event for a module to foster health during an critical life stage,†Leung and her colleagues wrote in Pediatrics.
NOT USED AS INTENDED
Shenkin told Reuters Health a investigate is some-more justification that food stamps aren’t indispensably assisting families be any healthier and aren’t being used as they were creatively intended.
“The module itself should be profitable for healthful dishes that are contributors to health,†he said.
Ideally, Shenkin said, a supervision module would prerogative people who buy uninformed fruits and vegetables with additional benefits, for instance – though that would call for increasing funding. A some-more cost-effective choice would meant requiring people squeeze non-nutritious dishes and drinks with their possess income and not SNAP benefits, he said.
Not everybody agrees, however, with some researchers and policymakers arguing that tying what consumers can squeeze with food stamps is paternalistic. There’s also a regard about a miss of grocery stores carrying healthy options in predominately low-income areas.
One intensity solution, according to Shenkin, could be to enhance what’s lonesome in SNAP-related preparation programs to inspire people to find some-more healthy options on their own.
“In no approach do we wish to cut food stamps,†he said. “We wish to optimize a value that they provide.â€
SOURCE: bit.ly/WTNx2T Pediatrics, online Feb 25, 2013.
