Keep Bureaucrats’ Hands Out of American’s Grocery Carts – Please

American families continue to bear the burden of inflation at the gas station and grocery store. In 2022 alone, food prices increased by 9.9%, and they’re expected to increase another 2.2 percent this year.

Despite families struggling to put food on the table, some members of Congress want to place new burdensome regulations on the most needy Americans and small businesses regarding their food choices.

Last year, Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced the Healthy SNAP Act which would exclude soft drinks, candy, snacks, and more from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), our largest anti-hunger initiative that serves lower-income families across the nation.

Other programs to restrict SNAP choice have begun cropping up as the Farm Bill renewal was introduced last month.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., tried to restrict choice in the 2024 appropriations bill by limiting purchases to only vaguely-defined “nutrient dense foods”

When that failed, he came back with language in the 2025 appropriations bill that delegates the decision-making to bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture.

What could possibly go wrong there?

Notably, his proposed five-state pilot program would effectively deputize store clerks to stop SNAP recipients from purchasing select items at the grocery store.

Not only is this plan unrealistic but it also jeopardizes consumer choice while placing undue burdens on businesses across the nation.

The goal of these plans seems to be preventing recipients from spending their SNAP benefits on foods politicians and bureaucrats don’t approve of.

There’s nothing new about government policies trying to control peoples’ behavior, and their intentions may be good, but I’ve seen firsthand that this simply doesn’t work.

My first job at 16 years of age was as a clerk in a grocery store, and I watched customers pay for certain groceries with their food stamps and WIC cards, and then pull a wad of cash out of their pocket to pay for beer, dog food and other unapproved items.

Money is fungible, and it’s not possible to prevent free Americans, even those who receive government benefits, from making their own choices.

The Farm Bill is our nation’s largest agriculture and anti-hunger initiative.

Historically, every five-years, Congress comes together to serve both farmers and lower-income families in one of our largest spending packages.

Last reauthorized in 2018, the current version has been extended and is back up for renewal this year.

But an updated Farm Bill should make it easier for businesses to produce and for families to afford food rather than as an opportunity to saddle Americans with even more regulation and control.

Across the United States, nearly twelve percent of our population is enrolled in the SNAP program. That’s about one in every eight Americans.

In Texas, for example, over three million residents, or eleven percent of our state population, relied on SNAP benefits in 2022 in order to keep food on the table.

Banning eleven percent of the population from an aisle or two of the grocery stores will not solve our obesity crisis but it will increase federal government control over our lives.

And where does it stop?

Some politicians and bureaucrats want to ban red meat in the name of health and the environment. Could this bill grease the slippery slope toward banning red meat?

Perhaps.

Or how about other “non-nutrient-dense” items, such as tortillas and whole milk, that are essential parts of our diet but are not considered “healthy” by FDA standards. Could those be banned too?

As Dr. Jonathan Ellen wrote for the Washington Examiner last year, banning a few products will not make Americans healthier or solve the obesity crisis.

He wrote, “research shows that balance and moderation, not deprivation and prohibition, properly orient our brains to make nutritious choices that, compounded over time, help keep our bodies healthy and strong for as long as possible.”

As Congress drafts the next Farm Bill reauthorization, we should focus on consumer choice and fewer regulations, not more government control.

Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a public policy research organization based in Dallas, Texas.

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