Poor people get the dregs - NYT

Poor People Get the Dregs - NYT

Julie Guthman

Julie Guthman is an associate professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has written extensively on the American food system.

Recently I spotted a hand-written sign at the checkout counter of my local Whole Foods supermarket. The sign requested that customers bring in cans of conventional food, for which they would receive the equivalent in 365, the market’s private label. The donated cans would be taken to the county food bank.

Increased use of food stamps must be seen as a good thing in a worsening economy. The system works.

That sign captured perfectly the limits of food charity as a way to address the problem of food insecurity in America: poor people get the dregs.

Much of the enormous network of food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens that collect and distribute donated food to those in need relies on the damaged goods of low-cost retailers and the surplus of the government’s commodity support programs. Processed cheese made from milk byproducts is not the sort of fare you’d find at Whole Foods, much less the farmers’ market.


Food banks around the country are depleted right now, as one might expect during a recession. The biggest problem with food charity is that when people need it most, these programs are least able to deliver.

Scholars of hunger have long championed entitlement programs, such as the food stamp program, as the most efficient, dignifying and effective way to provide reasonably nutritious food to people with insufficient income to buy it. Unlike food charity, the food stamp program is countercyclical – it picks up when times are tough. The increased use of food stamps must therefore be seen as a good thing despite that it reflects a worsening economy.

Those who complain about the use of food stamps to purchase cheap, junkie food ought to set their sights elsewhere. They should consider the myriad policies that allow products laden with high fructose corn syrup, transfats, growth hormones and synthetic processing aids to be sold as food. In my view, the unemployed and poor shouldn’t pay the moral price for our collective failure to curb the excesses of the food industry.