Arkansas panel backs junk-food cutoff for food-stamp recipients

A proposal to prevent food-stamp recipients from making unhealthful choices at the grocery store gained support from a House panel Tuesday over the objections of food banks and retail grocers.

Members of the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee voted 12-6 to advance House Bill 1035, or the Healthy Food Improvement Act, which would make Arkansas the first state to restrict food-stamp purchases of junk food.

If passed by the General Assembly, such restrictions would require a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and has never before granted such a request by states.

The legislation does not propose to restrict the amount of benefits recipients receive, but would prevent them from purchasing products deemed to have "insufficient nutritional value."

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mary Bentley R-Perryville, would not set a standard for determining unhealthy foods but would assign the state Department of Human Services the task of developing guidelines.

"I want the kids in our state to have sippy cups full of milk and juice, not Mountain Dew and Pepsi," Bentley told the committee Tuesday.

There were 398,749 Arkansans receiving food-stamp assistance in October, the last month for which numbers are available, according to Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb. That month's entire funding, $44 million, came from the federal government.

The chief lobbyist for the state's grocers -- who turned out Tuesday to oppose the bill -- said the state would have to bear the cost of creating regulations before the burden of implementing the rules is passed on to businesses.

But Bentley said the time is right for Arkansas -- whose residents are cited as among the most obese in the country -- to "pioneer" changes to the food-assistance program because of a new Republican administration entering the White House.

Doing so would help the state save on covering obesity-related medical costs through Medicaid, Bentley said after filing her bill in December.

Arkansans receive $1.25 billion in treatment attributable to obesity every year, 40 percent of which is paid through Medicaid and Medicare, according to "Healthy Active Arkansas," a 2015 report by the University of Arkansas System's Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.





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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation -- a national organization devoted to health issues -- named Arkansas the sixth-most obese state in 2016, an improvement from its fattest state title in 2015.

A similar proposal to restrict food-stamp purchases in nearby Tennessee -- pegged by the Johnson Foundation as the ninth-most obese state -- was pulled Tuesday by its Republican sponsor, who cited the USDA's reluctance to grant the required waiver, according to The Associated Press.

The argument that restrictions would make recipients eat better food conflicts with the USDA, which has stated that users are just as likely to use the portion of their grocery benefits paid in cash to skirt the rules.

President-elect Donald Trump has yet to nominate a USDA secretary. It is the last Cabinet office awaiting an appointment.

Low-income buyers have habits similar to people who don't use food stamps, argued Charlie Spakes, the president of Arkansas Grocers and Retail Merchants Association. He added that members of the association already have spent "thousands" for nutrition education and cooking classes.

Once new guidelines are in place, Spakes said, individual grocers would be saddled with the cost of scanner software that recognizes prohibited foods among hundreds of thousands of items at the checkout line. Most software systems already filter out broad groups of prohibited items such as tobacco and alcohol.

"I would ask that [lawmakers] let us keep doing our work," Spakes told a reporter after the meeting. "This is not a low-income thing. ... We need to educate all Arkansans rather than restrict and create bigger government."

Speakers at Tuesday's committee meeting gave differing opinions about the relative access to cheap, nutritious food.

Resident Paul Calvert speaking in favor of Bentley's proposal, said foods such as baby carrots, chicken quarters and bananas are cheaper and more nutritious than processed chips and sodas.

But Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance Executive Director Kathy Webb, a former state representative from Little Rock, said she was concerned that poor Arkansans living in places where there are few supermarkets or large grocers, do not have access to such fresh foods.

Webb was joined by Christie Jordan, the executive director of the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas, who predicted food banks would be swamped by food-stamp recipients priced out of long shopping lists.

"If food-stamp dollars buy less at the store, then the clients are going to be looking somewhere else to get the food that they need to feed their families," Jordan said.

Lawmakers on the committee considered limiting debate to five minutes for each side but overruled the motion before later approving a cap of 10 minutes apiece.

Among the most sponsored pieces of legislation heading into the general session, Bentley's bill has attracted 46 primary and co-sponsors as of Tuesday.

The proposal now goes to the full House for consideration, which could happen next week, according to Bentley.

Information for this article was contributed by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and by Emma Pettit of Arkansas Online.

A Section on 01/18/2017

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