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Their diet plays a huge role. I lived directly next to a housing project for eight years (until quite recently) and saw first-hand how food stamps are spent. It should be illegal to use your food stamp allocation to buy more than 15% of sugar and trash foods, but it isn't. Therefore "food stamps" represent a transfer payment to Coca Cola Inc.

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An ER doc I know says he regularly sees kids these days come in with massive GI distress from eating too much Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

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I live in the Southwest and lived in SoCal. Latinos and Hispanics aren't living in housing projects in CA. They're living crowded into apartments and single family houses as rent is exorbitant. And many, esp elder, eat traditional staples. They are dying at higher rates all over the US, as are Native Americans and blacks.

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I would start by blaming the agribusiness and city planning for that. How do you expect poor people to be able to eat well without a decently priced farmer's market within biking distance ?

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Urban grocery stores have decent food, including some organic options, and it is possible to obtain a solid diet.

Farmer's markets don't take food stamps but there is a an urban farmer's market a 15-minute walk from the housing projects described above.

The problem is not access, it is policy. All these "progressive" mayors and governors really show their true stripes on this one. They don't care what poor people eat. If they did, they'd do something about it.

Meanwhile Coke and Monsanto keep raking it in on our tax dime.

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Hmm, I thought that you were talking about one of those "food deserts". Are they actually just not that common in the USA, or were your neighbors just lucky ?

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