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There was an article in the Summer 2017 issue of "Good Medicine" that suggested removing SNAP ("food stamp" replacement) program eligibility for sweetened beverages, desserts, red meat, cheese, salty snacks, candy and sugar for health reasons. I support such SNAP eligibility removals, except for red meat or cheese. I'm not so sure that red meat or cheese should be removed from SNAP eligibility since so much of American agricultural land is only suitable for raising red meat/dairy product animals. That issue in "Good Medicine" also reported on the MIND diet to reduce Alzheimer's risk. The MIND diet was also reported...

NEW YORK (AP) — A crackdown on illegal immigration under President Donald Trump has driven some poor people to take a drastic step: opt out of federal food assistance because they are fearful of deportation, activists and immigrants say. People who are not legal residents of the U.S. are not eligible to take part in what is formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But many poor families include a mix of non-legal residents and legal ones, such as children who have citizenship because they were born in the U.S. In those cases, it is often an adult...

From our file named "Duh." The Alabama Department of Human Resources says 13 counties that reinitiated a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program, saw an 85% drop in recipients. The counties had been exempt from the work requirement due to high levels of unemployment. But with the economy recovering, the state of Alabama restarted the work requirement on January 1 this year, which resulted in the massive drop in SNAP participants. ... Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The...

UK PM Theresa May announces plan to call snap general election on 8 June. She said Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership following the EU referendum.

Luisa Fortin sometimes sits up at night, wondering what her clients are eating. She is the SNAP Outreach Coordinator for the Chattanooga Food Bank — but lately she has done less outreaching. Her families, working immigrants in northwest Georgia, are spooked by the political climate, Fortin said. Increasingly, she’s being asked to explain how food stamps may impact immigration status, if not to outright cancel family food benefits. Since mid-January, five of Fortin’s families have withdrawn from the SNAP program. One, the single mother of three citizen daughters, had fled to Georgia to escape an abusive husband. Another, two green-card...

Sad Day! Illegal Immigrants are going hungry so Trump won’t deport them

A private high school in California earned millions from the Snap Inc. public offering, after two students told their dad about the popularity of the app five years ago. Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, Calif., invested $15,000 in Snapchat’s seed round when the dad, Lightspeed partner Barry Eggers, invited the school’s board to participate in the seed round with his firm. That investment has paid off, as Snap started trading Thursday, and closed 44% above its issue price. Shares of Snap soared 11% Friday to $27.09, compared with the S&P 500 SPX, +0.05% which inched up less than...

A California high school has made millions of dollars from the initial public offering of shares in Snap Inc., the company behind the Snapchat photo messaging application.

Republican Governor Paul LePage dared to begin enforcing Maine's volunteer and work requirements for food stamp (SNAP) recipients to keep their benefits. The end result was more than 9,000 non-disabled adults getting dropped from the program. As CNS News' Eric Schiener reports, a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) spokesman tells the Associated Press that 12,000 non-disabled adults were in Maine’s SNAP program before Jan. 1 - a number that dropped to 2,680 by the end of March... The rules prevent adults, who are not disabled and do not have dependents, from receiving food stamps for more than three...

A rabbit hole is a scary place. You never expect to find it, and when you do, it starts from the unlikeliest of places. Who knew that the globalist push for a worldwide Islamic Fundamentalist Caliphate started at a small market in Irvington New Jersey? An Irvington man on Monday admitted in federal court to running a food stamps-for-cash scheme that cost the government more than $800,000 over two years. Miguel Antonio Azcona pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Mary L. Cooper in Trenton to a single count of theft of government funds, according to the office of U.S. Attorney...

Michael Bloomberg and Michelle Obama have been lecturing us (or at least those among us who use food stamps, aka SNAP) to no avail when it comes to sugary soft drinks. Anahad O’Conner of the New York Times reports: What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store? The answer was largely a mystery until now. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74 billion food stamp program called SNAP, has published a detailed report that provides a glimpse into the shopping cart of the typical household that receives food stamps. The findings show that the No....

What do households on food stamps buy at the grocery store? The answer was largely a mystery until now. The United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $74 billion food stamp program called SNAP, has published a detailed report that provides a glimpse into the shopping cart of the typical household that receives food stamps. The findings show that the No. 1 purchases by SNAP households are soft drinks, which accounted for 5 percent of the dollars they spent on food. The category of ‘sweetened beverages,’ which includes fruit juices, energy drinks and sweetened teas, accounted for almost 10...

The United States Digital Service is a startup at The White House, using design and technology to deliver better services to the American people. www.usds.gov For people who need timely access to critical benefits, interacting with the government can become as time consuming as a part-time job. As William has encountered time and again, enrolling in these programs can be cumbersome, duplicative and at odds with the demands of working and caring for one’s family. In recent years, non-profits, academia and state and federal government agencies alike began studying and experimenting with a shift toward a more family-centered — as opposed to...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to launch a two-year pilot program this summer with seven retailers to allow food stamp recipients the ability to purchase their groceries online. More than 44 million Americans participated last year in federal government's low-income food assistance program, called SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Last year, the average benefit each person received was just over $125.50 per month. "Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to healthy food choices can be limited," USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a release. "We're...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2017 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced the seven retail firms selected to take part in a pilot designed to enable Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants to purchase their groceries online. The two-year pilot is slated to begin this summer. "Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to healthy food choices can be limited," USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "We're looking forward to being able to bring the benefits of the online market to low-income Americans participating in SNAP."

An Arizona Democratic lawmaker was indicted for illegally getting food stamps and falsifying her application to the program in June. . . . An Ohio millionaire descended from Iranian royalty was indicted for welfare fraud in December after prosecutors allege he fraudulently took $45,000 in Medicare benefits and received $8,400 in food stamps. Mahvi, 65, insists that he is innocent, that even though he has an 8,000-square-foot home, complete with horse stables, a swimming pool, and a garage where he parks his Lexus, his family gets very little income and lives off of loans from friends.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans are laying the groundwork for a fresh effort to overhaul the food stamp program during Donald Trump's presidency, with the possibility of new work and eligibility requirements for millions of people. The GOP majority on the House Agriculture Committee released a two-year review of the program on Wednesday that stops short of making specific policy recommendations, but hints at areas where Republicans could focus: strengthening work requirements and perhaps issuing new ones, tightening some eligibility requirements or providing new incentives to encourage food stamp recipients to buy healthier foods.

BALTIMORE (WBFF) -- More than a dozen Baltimore-area retailers are accused of misusing food stamps and defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) of millions of dollars. The indictments, announced Tuesday, come roughly three years after nine local retailers were charged in what prosecutors described as a "$7 million scheme" of trading food stamps for cash. All the defendants in that case were convicted. "Last year the Dept. of Agriculture Inspector General brought to our attention that many Baltimore-area retailers were continuing to rip-off the food stamp program," United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein said...

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that 750,000 additional working families are now eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – or SNAP– which helps fight hunger among working New Yorkers.

Gov. Chris Christie rejected legislation Thursday that would have raised monthly welfare benefits for the first time in 30 years, and would have restored $7.5 million in grants for women's clinics which he eliminated when he first took office in 2010. In veto statements released just before 10 p.m. — two hours before the start of the new fiscal year — the governor said his actions "protected taxpayers" from the "irresponsible" spending by the Democrats who control the Legislature. "Unfortunately, the Legislature has continued its annual ritual of attempting to pass additional unbudgeted spending for selected interests," according to Christie's...