Put away your calculator for just a second and think twice about the road you have chosen. The negative effects of the policy you support are far greater than dollars and cents. The chief drawback of this wonderful "give away" you praise was to undermine the pride of poor people who had previously been able to boast that they "refused to accept charity" (which used to be a characteristic of the poor). Call me old-fashioned but I see no "net" benefit to becoming a society where everyone is on the public tit.
Put cheese in one hand and pride in the other, and see which one you can live on the longest. I'll be the first one to agree about other forms of welfare, but you really, truly must have food to survive *now*. You cannot work without food, you cannot go to school and learn on an empty stomach, and there is no reason why not.
We produce vast quantities of food. American agribusiness is astounding, and few people even realize how big it is. It is comparable to our military-industrial complex in scale. It is America's shining enterprise.
Certainly people will benefit who "shouldn't", but a heck of a lot of people will benefit who should.
If it was a money handout, or a medical entitlement, or an educational entitlement, you can honestly debate giving it away for free. Even rent can be seen as a luxury. But not food.
Again, warehousing all the food to keep it off the market costs the taxpayers lots of money, so denying people this food for "moral" reasons actually *costs* us all money.
And I cannot embrace a morality that ever suggests that people should be starved "for their own good." Luxuries, maybe. Even life-saving drugs, perhaps. But not food.