Monday, January 17, 2011

Candyland

Sometimes certain aspects of government bureaucracy defy any level of commonsense. My wife and I ran into this seeming insanity last night.

My wife was tasked with doing a grocery run for one of her clients. She picked up 1 gallon of milk, 2 12-packs of soda pop and 8 ready-made meal replacement drinks. We got up to the checkout counter and, after using her client's EBT card, the clerk informs us that one set of the items is not covered under the Food Stamp program.

Logically, we reach to remove the soda pop from the order -- it is of absolutely no nutritional value -- and the clerk informs us that the problem is not the worthless carbonated beverages. No, the meal replacement drinks aren't covered!!

Mind you, a person could load up on all the candy they wanted. You could fill your basket with potato chips, pastries, cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream and bags of popcorn. You can pay for all of these with your EBT card, but not ready-made supplemental drinks.

What gets my goat the most is that, of all the items listed above, the meal replacement drinks offer the greatest nutritional value. Most such drinks are well-balanced nutritionally too. And they can be a very important part of the diet of certain individuals who, for whatever reason, are having difficulty chewing or swallowing food.

It simply strikes me as bizarre that nutritionally-suspect candy gets the thumbs up, while a far more nutritionally-rich food doesn't make the list. That seems sort of ass backwards to me.

1 comment:

  1. Truly incredible. Can I guess that the supplements were not made by the Coca-Cola or Nestle empires?

    ReplyDelete

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