The US Food Stamp Program - Evil or Good - Essay Example

Short EssayHunger is a devastating experience that has often taken lives of many people across the world. In the United States, the federal government established America’s food stamp program to alleviate hunger incident in the nation, especially among the poor in the society. Even though food stamp program is aimed at promoting healthy eating and alleviating hunger, especially among the poor, beneficiaries of food stamp program can use it to purchase sweetened foods and soda. These foods do not add value to people’s lives, but expose people to a host of health risks.

If only I could be given a chance to start my life all over again, one choice I would surely redo is my addiction to soda and MacDonald’s burgers. When I was seven years old, I could not go a day without taking at least two sodas and a burger per day. Thanks to my ignorant choice I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eleven and am also overweight. Despite the fact that I am tireless working with a gym instructor to contain my weight, the craving for soda is posing a big challenge especially when food stamp program makes it so easy to acquire sodas.

Stephanie Soechting’s film Fed Up is a documentary that focuses on overweight epidemic in the United States, exploring major causes of obesity such as sweetened foods and too much consumption of fast foods in the country. Currently, food and beverage companies actively advertise sweetened foodstuffs, with children as their main target. According to Thomas Farley, medical researchers link weight gain and diabetes with sugary drinks. Farley presents a New York survey revealed that obese adults and children are 57 percent and 40 percent respectively.

Clearly, sweetened foods are major health concern that must be responded to with urgency. The stamp food program should bar its beneficiaries from using the program to buy unhealthy foodstuffs like sodas and other sweetened foods that are linked with weight gain and diabetes.