Rick Santorum cites obesity rates as reason to eliminate food stamps

At a campaign event in Iowa last week, Rick Santorum promised to radically reduce federal funding for food stamps, claiming that high obesity rates among the poor indicate the program is no longer necessary.

Santorum wonders why obesity is a problem among people who rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. If he honestly doesn’t know the answer to that question, or at least doesn’t have a pretty good idea of the factors that have resulted in high obesity rates among the poor in this country, I don’t see how he possibly can say with a straight face that he’s qualified for ANY federal office, let alone the presidency.

The U.S. has an unusual and unique problem in that the poor are disproportionately more likely to be obese than the average American, largely because of the issue of food deserts in low-income areas and subsidies that often result in unhealthy foods being much cheaper than fresh food items located in the “outer ring” of the grocery store. While that an oversimplification of the overall problem (I could write several thousand-word posts about this, and I have, in fact, written about food deserts before), I may have just demonstrated that I clearly know more about this than someone who has the audacity to think they can run this country. I’d say call me in about 10 years, but there’s nothing quite like a master’s degree in public policy to make a person realize they REALLY don’t want to be president. 🙂