Soft Drink Industry Fights Proposed Food Stamp Ban

The mayor wants to reduce obesity and diabetes by banning the use of food stamps to buy “sugar-sweetened beverages” in New York City.
Food and beverage lobbyists see the mayor’s plan as a well-intentioned but misguided and paternalistic effort. They say it would create a logistical bottleneck at checkout counters and stigmatize poor people using food stamps.
They also fear that restrictions on soft drinks would set a precedent for the government to distinguish between good and bad foods and to ban the use of food stamps for other products — an issue sure to come up next year in the Congressional debate on a new farm bill.
“Once you start going into grocery carts, deciding what people can or cannot buy, where do you stop?” asked Kevin W. Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
New York officials estimate that $75 million to $135 million in food stamp benefits are spent on sugar-sweetened beverages in the city each year. Such beverages, they say, are the single largest contributor to the obesity epidemic.

　「フードスタンプ」というものがあることを知りませんでした。なんか大変ですねぇ……。