Bartholomew Sullivan

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The House Agriculture Committee debated Thursday whether taxpayers should pay for sweetened beverages through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but when the five expert witnesses were asked if soda has nutritional value, not one said yes.

Still, only one of the witnesses, Angela Rachidi, who studies poverty for the American Enterprise Institute, a business-oriented think tank, advocated restrictions for candy and soda now paid for by the program. She said restrictions would prompt retailers to make healthier alternatives available.

Others argued that the cost of implementing restrictions would be prohibitive and have limited value.

“Cashiers end up being food police at check-out time,” said Leslie G. Sarasin, CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, a retail grocery industry association. Delays at check-out counters in an industry with small profit margins would cost retailers, and even drive them out of the program, she said.

“It would create real havoc,” she said.

But Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., noted that modern computerized scanning cash registers already distinguish eligible food items from alcohol, tobacco and non-food products that aren’t SNAP-eligible.

“Shouldn’t we try?” La Malfa asked. “Maybe it’s worth the trouble.”

Chairman Michael Conaway R-Texas, acknowledging the subject of restricting purchases was both a “very timely and somewhat sensitive topic,” pointed to a USDA study released in November that showed SNAP recipients paid 20 cents of every dollar on soda, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar.

Although non-SNAP households display similar purchasing habits, Conaway said, “one can reasonably infer that billions in taxpayer dollars are being spent on sweetened beverages and prepared desserts.”

Questions ranged from the impact of sweetened beverages on obesity and other health compromises, to the benefit of SNAP nutrition education programs in places where the only grocery provider is a convenience store. While some hinted that the program is too big, others wondered what a reduction would do to local economies. Some advocated increasing the monthly benefit while one asked if it should be block-granted to the states. Sarasin, of the food marketing institute, also questioned whether yogurt drinks and sweetened fruit juices would be included or excluded in a ban.

Representing what he called “the salad bowl of the world” on California’s central coast, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat, asked how to get people to eat healthy food, noting many of his farmworker constituents don’t eat what they produce. He said schools in his district are experimenting with salad bars, encouraging children to bring home healthy habits to their families.

Read more:

Study: Teens are more likely to eat healthy if they think it's rebellious

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., ran his state’s nutrition programs as commissioner of agriculture and helped make it possible for farmers markets to take SNAP payments through electronic benefit transfer cards. He noted that most recipients spend their entire monthly benefit in the first week. He suggested releasing benefits bi-monthly would be helpful in his poor district.

Others had philosophical or comical takes on the issue of restricting some foods from the program. Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., said it violated the founding fathers’ right of “pursuing happiness” by depriving SNAP recipients from the pleasure of eating “sweet things.”

Rep. Al Lawson Jr., D-Ga., a confessed fan of RC Cola and MoonPies, said he was recently at the Atlanta airport where the line at Subway was long but the line at Bojangles was not.

“Bojangles won out,” he said to laughter.

Diane W. Schanzenbach, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an economics professor at Northwestern University, noted the program has been around long enough to show measurable benefits. Children born to mothers on what were once called food stamps are born healthier, have lower obesity and high blood pressure rates, have a higher rate of high school graduation and were less likely to be on welfare as adults. She said the program is an investment in children.

Rep. John Faso, R-N.Y., was the member who asked whether soda has nutritional value after noting it’s costing the public more than $3 billion in SNAP benefits a year. He called for a carefully designed study of what impact a restriction would have.