Reply #7: Before I became a teacher, I was a food-stamp [View All]

eligibility worker. It was a horrible job. I know the amounts of food stamps that families are expected to live on for a month, and it is ridiculous. Those stories about welfare moms loading up their shopping carts with steaks are 99.9% bogus.

The poor buy fatty/starchy foods because in MOST cases they are cheaper than buying fresh, healthy foods. They are also MORE FILLING to the stomach, making the kiddos feel fuller, and not as hungry.

The poor have mostly never been educated in how to shop for and prepare healthy foods. It does take an amount of education to know how to do this. They were fed fatty/starchy foods, and think this is the way you are supposed to do it. They don't have access to cook books, magazine recipes, newspaper/mag coupons. You also have to be taught how to make and follow a realistic budget, instead of spending all your monthly food stamps in the first week.

I see too many elderly who live on VERY fixed incomes, who are also not managing to stretch their meager resources to include healthy foods....they are also buying fatty/starchy foods for that full-stomach feeling, even tho they know it is not healthy.