Improving the Nutritional Impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Perspectives from the Participants

Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal food assistance program in the United States designed to provide supplemental support to alleviate food insecurity and improve dietary intake. Currently 1 in 7 Americans or 47.6 million people receive governmental support to purchase any kind of food as long as it is not alcohol, nutritional supplements, heated food or food served to eat on location. In recent years, policymakers, public health nutritionists and anti‐hunger advocates have been engaged in an ongoing discussion about how to modify SNAP policies to maximize its nutritional impact for its beneficiaries. However, SNAP participants and low‐income nonparticipants have been missing from this conversation, despite their key stakeholder interests. This online study surveyed 387 individuals from Amazon Mechanical Turk, of whom 118 were SNAP beneficiaries and 269 food‐insufficient but not enrolled in SNAP (nonparticipants), on their perspectives of proposed strategies to improve the nutritional impact of SNAP. The majority of all respondents (70%) believed the current benefit level was insufficient to afford a healthy diet. Most SNAP participants (76%) and nonparticipants (81%) supported pairing monetary incentives for fruits and vegetables with restrictions for sugary beverages to be purchased with SNAP benefits. Participants were asked to choose from two hypothetical scenarios: 1) a SNAP program that combined healthy incentives and restrictions for sugary bevera0ges (i.e. SNAP+), or 2) SNAP in its current form. From the whole sample, 67% of SNAP participants and 83% of nonparticipants chose SNAP+. Of those who initially chose SNAP in its current form, 68% of SNAP participants and 64% of nonparticipants would choose SNAP+ if paired with a 50% increase in benefit level. These results show overwhelming support from program participants and food‐insufficient nonparticipants for SNAP policies that both facilitate the purchase of healthful foods and limit the purchase of unhealthful foods, specifically sugary beverages. These policies deserve to be studied in pilot projects and may help to alleviate diet‐related health disparities in this vulnerable population.Support or Funding InformationThis study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant K99 HD084758 to C.W. Leung).