Forget Junk Food Restrictions. It’s Time to Scrap Food Stamps Altogether

 The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—more commonly known as food stamps—has seen sharply rising costs in recent years. The costs have been slowly ballooning ever since the program’s inception in 1961, but due to a variety of policies and economic factors that arose during the pandemic, SNAP spending is rapidly escalating.

For context, SNAP expenditures in fiscal year 2000 totaled $17 billion (FY 2000 was Oct. 1, 1999 - Sept. 30, 2000. All annual costs that follow are for fiscal years). That’s a lot more than the $9.2 billion spent on the program in 1980—even after adjusting for inflation—but with population changes and such, perhaps one could argue that doubling the spending over two decades was reasonable.

But the growth in SNAP spending hardly stopped there.

In the following years spending on the program continued to increase, and by 2010-2019 annual expenditures were hovering around $70 billion per year. And when the pandemic hit, all bets were off. In 2021 SNAP costs soared to $113.7 billion, by far the highest in the program’s history. In 2022 costs were $119.2 billion. And for 2023, Congress has generously provided $153.8 billion for the program, roughly double what was spent just 5 years ago.

The causes of these increasing costs largely trace back to policy changes. As Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute explains, “SNAP was already on an increasing trajectory stemming from years of policy changes that relaxed eligibility and increased program take-up. However, actions since the pandemic have increased SNAP expenditures well beyond caseload increases, with considerable effect.”

One pandemic-related change was the introduction of SNAP emergency allotments, which allowed all households to receive the maximum benefit allowed. Congress finally ended these payments in the FY 2023 omnibus bill, but various other policy changes are setting the stage to make $100 billion+ levels of SNAP spending the new normal.

A Brief Primer on Food Stamps

With costs reaching unprecedented levels, it’s worth taking some time to understand what exactly this program does and what people have been saying about it in recent years.

To the first point, SNAP is a federal nutrition assistance program administered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides funds to low-income households to help them buy groceries. Participation in the program has been growing steadily in recent years, from 17.2 million Americans in 2000 to 41.2 million in 2022—which is about 12.5 percent of the US population (or 1 in 8 people).

The main eligibility requirement for SNAP benefits is that a household must have an income below 130 percent of the federal poverty level ($32,000 for a family of three). Other eligibility criteria include things like work requirements, though there are exceptions for certain groups such as students, those caring for children, and the elderly.

SNAP participants are allowed to buy almost any foods and beverages they want with the funds, with the main exceptions being alcoholic beverages, vitamins, and hot foods (such as fast food). In 2018 the average monthly benefit for a SNAP participant was $125, though this number has increased in recent years due to the aforementioned policy changes.

The Junk Food Problem

Much of the discussion around SNAP in recent years has revolved around the nutritional value of the food being purchased with SNAP funds, and for good reason. A 2016 USDA study found that 9.3 percent of the average SNAP household’s grocery bill is spent on “sweetened beverages” like soda and pop (the number was 7.1 percent for non-SNAP households).

Zooming out to junk food more broadly, the study found that 22.6 percent of a SNAP household’s grocery bill is spent on a combination of sweetened beverages, prepared desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar, while non-SNAP households spend 19.7 percent of their grocery budget on these items.

Doing the math, American taxpayers subsidized junk food purchases to the tune of $26.9 billion in 2022.

Experts were sounding the alarm on this even before the 2016 study came out. “We’ve analyzed what [food stamp] participants are eating and it’s horrible food,” said Walter Willett, chair of Harvard University’s Department of Nutrition, in 2015. “It’s a diet designed to produce obesity and diabetes.”

In the wake of the 2016 report, the pressure to reform the SNAP program has only grown. “In this sense, SNAP is a multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “It’s pretty shocking.”

Ban Sugar-Sweetened Beverages from SNAP?

Though many would like to exclude all junk food from being purchased with SNAP dollars, the most widely supported reform is the more modest proposal to exclude sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) like pop and soda. This may seem like a no-brainer to some, but there is actually considerable debate about whether this is a good idea. Importantly, the USDA has historically come down on the side of the status quo, and it has denied many requests from states for SSB restrictions over the years (something the sugar lobbyists no doubt appreciate).

Proponents of SSB restrictions on SNAP funds justify their position by pointing to the clear negative health effects of these drinks. “A nutrition assistance program that permits the purchase of SSBs is blatantly ignoring decades of research documenting the harm associated with these products,” writes Nicole E. Negowetti of Harvard University in a 2018 paper on the subject.

Some studies have indicated there is a lot of potential for good in such a restriction. For instance, a 2014 Stanford University study concluded that SSB restrictions on SNAP funds would prevent 141,000 kids from becoming obese and save a quarter million adults from Type 2 diabetes.

Proponents also point out that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should be funding things that are, you know, nutritious. This isn’t mere wordplay either. The program used to be called the Food Stamps Program, but Congress changed the name to SNAP in 2008 specifically to emphasize the shift in focus from its historical purpose of just getting people enough calories to its more modern purpose to “permit low-income households to obtain a more nutritious diet.”

If the goal of SNAP is to improve nutrition, is it really so much to ask that SNAP funds not be used on sugary drinks?

Yes, actually, say the detractors in this debate, and they have their reasons. These reasons broadly fall into two categories: practicalities and ethics.

On the practical side, some SSB restriction opponents argue that such a measure would create logistical difficulties because it would impose significant burdens on those administering the program.

Another argument is that the measure would be ineffective because people would just use the SNAP funds for the non-SSB parts of their groceries and spend their own money on SSBs. Money is fungible, as they say. This is probably one of the stronger arguments against an SSB restriction, but proponents argue that even if this substitution does take place, it might not be one for one, so the SSB restriction could still help. And given that this is essentially an empirical question, wouldn’t it make sense to at least authorize a pilot project and see what happens?

On the ethical side, some detractors argue that an SSB restriction could lead to stigmatization for those on SNAP. By singling out the poor, the argument goes, this restriction could make it seem like overconsumption of SSBs is a “poor-person” problem, when in fact this is a problem that affects all Americans more or less equally.

A related argument is that such a restriction would amount to a demeaning paternalism, where the government is taking away the free choice of SNAP beneficiaries “for their own good.” “A restriction on SSB is considered by some to be a patronizing attempt to ‘micromanage’ the lives of the poor,” writes Negowetti. “The message conveyed through the restriction on SSB purchases with SNAP is that poor people make bad choices, therefore requiring government intervention to manage their food choices whereas higher income persons do not.”

The Case against Food Stamps

Drawing on that last point, many would argue that the pro-freedom side of this debate is the side against SSB restrictions. After all, we don’t want the government limiting people’s freedom of choice, right?

This is a tempting perspective, but it’s not quite that simple. The key thing to remember is that this isn’t the SNAP beneficiary’s own money. This is taxpayer money. And that changes things.

“No one is suggesting poor people can’t choose what they want to eat,” notes Dr. David Ludwig, a Professor of Nutrition at Harvard. “But we’re saying let’s not use government benefits to pay for foods that are demonstrably going to undermine public health.”

Though some portray SSB restrictions as a “ban” on soft drinks, this rhetoric is misleading. The government would not be “infringing on the freedoms of low-income Americans” by specifying what they can buy with the money provided. It would simply be saying that if you’re going to take taxpayer money, taxpayers would like a say on how that is spent. The rights of SNAP beneficiaries aren’t being violated simply because taxpayer money comes with conditions.

In fact, the only rights being violated here are the rights of taxpayers to keep their own money and spend it as they see fit. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Peter is the victim, and giving him a modicum of control over what Paul can spend the money on is little consolation for being forcibly deprived of what is rightfully his money.

This is where the framing of this entire issue needs to be challenged. The debate people are having is whether SSB restrictions should be put in place. But the debate we need to be having is whether this program should exist at all.

Not only is this robbery on a massive scale, the program also seems to be doing a pretty bad job at promoting nutrition. “One of the great mistakes,” Milton Friedman reminds us, “is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” The fact is, nutrition and health among low-income Americans remain terrible despite decades of food stamps and astronomical levels of funding. While approximately one third of adults are obese in the US overall, that number is 40 percent for Americans on food stamps. In short, SNAP isn’t working. Could an SSB restriction help? Sure. But it’s hardly a silver bullet.

There comes a point where we need to acknowledge that despite being designed with the best of intentions, this program has simply failed to accomplish its stated goals. Nutrition is tremendously important, but that’s precisely why we need to explore alternative solutions that might actually fix the problem, rather than throwing more and more money at solutions that clearly aren’t getting results.

So what would be a better solution? For starters, private charities can play a big role in this fight, especially if taxpayers are no longer saddled with a $100 billion program every year. True, charities probably wouldn’t get an equivalent amount of funding because they’d have to rely on voluntary donations, but they’d also likely be much more effective with the money they do get, and it’s quite possible that the increased effectiveness could more than outweigh the lower funding.

The reason charities would likely be more effective is that they have to compete for donations, which means they will succeed as an organization only to the extent that their programs actually work. Whereas government programs tend to get funded regardless of performance, charities are directly accountable to their benefactors and are quickly dissolved if they prove ineffective.

As with every other sector, a multiplicity of charities allows us to collectively “try out” different ideas, and then the market can select for the best ones.

One charity might run a program similar to food stamps, except they only allow the recipients to use the money on healthy food. Another charity might provide money for groceries on the condition that you agree to not buy any junk food for the month, not even with your own money (thus getting around the fungibility problem). Yet another charity might take a completely different approach, promising to pay people a certain sum of money if they reach certain health-related targets like walking for 30 minutes a day or losing a certain amount of weight. These groups can then do studies to demonstrate how effective their programs are at improving people’s health, and benefactors can review these studies when deciding where to put their money.

Another great way to help the poor would be to just get the government out of their way, starting with not taxing them. The marginal tax rate on income up to $11,000 is 10 percent, and the marginal rate on income from $11,000 - $44,725 is 12 percent. That’s $182 a month for someone making $20,000 a year, just from federal income taxes.

And we wonder why people struggle to put food on the table.

On top of taxes, governments also maintain a litany of regulations, trade barriers, land-use laws, licensing laws, and permits that make the cost of living vastly higher than it needs to be. Then there’s inflation, which disproportionately hurts the poor since they tend to receive the newly printed money only after all the prices have gone up.

And that’s just scratching the surface. We could be here all day talking about how the government makes life hard for the poor.

A New Perspective on Poverty

To many, the prospect of abolishing SNAP sounds callous and cruel. Even many who are otherwise staunchly anti-government are sympathetic to programs like this, because the plight of the poor is so compelling.

But abolishing SNAP is not about turning our backs on the poor. It’s about recognizing that there are far better ways to help them. In particular, it’s about a paradigm shift from seeing government as the solution to seeing government as the problem.

The harms the government creates are largely invisible. Food stamp programs, on the other hand, are easy to see. But as Hazlitt famously pointed out in Economics in One Lesson, we need to look beyond the salient and conspicuous to those policy impacts which are less obvious yet still very real.

Those who care most about hunger and nutrition should be the most eager to shift the conversation away from bad solutions like robbing Peter to pay Paul and toward better solutions like having the government get out of Paul’s way. There are ways to solve these problems, but they require a radical departure from our usual way of thinking about them.

The goal is not some cruel dystopia where the poorest among us are simply left to starve. The goal is to reduce taxes and regulations so much that absolute poverty becomes a thing of the past. We oppose food stamps not because we want poverty to persist or get worse, but because we care enough about poverty to insist on better solutions, solutions that actually work.

https://fee.org/articles/forget-junk-food-restrictions-it-s-time-to-scrap-food-stamps-altogether/

The Prophet of Covid Tyranny

 Three years ago, as the novel coronavirus was making its way from Wuhan to every corner of earth, so did the novel mode of emergency management pioneered in that city: the mass quarantine of healthy individuals, now known by the prison shorthand of “lockdown.” Just as remarkable as the rapid worldwide embrace of lockdown was the dearth of critical reflection on its unprecedented character. Not only had confinement on this scale never been attempted, it had been overtly rejected in most pandemic-response guidance before 2020. In January of that year, the world looked on with shock as China confined more than 10 million of its citizens to their homes overnight; yet by the end of March, most governments and many citizens had come to accept this approach as normal and necessary. Within three months, the “Covid consensus”—as Compact columnist Thomas Fazi and his co-author, Toby Green, call it in their book of that title—hardened into unassailable orthodoxy.

One major exception to the uncritical posture toward this new policy regime—a posture that became especially inflexible among intellectuals of the left—was Giorgio Agamben. The Italian philosopher had been writing for decades about the use of the “state of exception” to suspend normal freedoms and restraints on the exercise of power. This same line of analysis, which secured his intellectual influence in the aftermath of 9/11, made him a pariah during the Covid era.

The denunciations he faced from erstwhile friends and allies—including his longtime English-language translator—didn’t deter Agamben. He continued to reflect critically on the ever-expanding restrictions on basic human life legitimated by the threat of the pandemic, from forced confinement to the mandatory covering of the face—the very “site of politics,” he argued in one essay—to the mass exclusion of the unvaccinated from public life. Three years on, most of what Agamben said has been vindicated. Many of the policies in question are accepted to have been ineffectual at achieving their ostensible aims at best, and disastrously counterproductive at worst. The only thing these measures unquestionably achieved—as Agamben foresaw—was a vast expansion of the power to confine, exclude, and censor.

Nonetheless, Agamben remains persona non grata in the academic precincts where he was once celebrated. Near the end of last year, for instance, a planned symposium on his pandemic writings at Stanford, whose university press has published much of his work in English, was canceled due to complaints from faculty members and students. To this day, much of the academic left remains in thrall to a fantasy that the pandemic was an opportunity to forge solidarity around shared vulnerability. Agamben saw early on that the opposite was true: “Bare life, and the fear of losing it, is not something that unites people.” This is because “fellow human beings … are now seen only as potential [plague] anointers whom we must avoid at all cost.”

In a reflection written a month after his initial column, Agamben asked why, given the imposition of unparalleled restrictions on basic freedoms with so little evidentiary support, there hadn’t been more opposition—and why the little criticism that did surface was so easily dismissed and marginalized. His tentative answer was that, before most of us had even heard the word “coronavirus,” “the plague was somehow already present, even if only unconsciously, and people’s life conditions were such that a sudden sign could make them appear as they really were.” This remains true three years later, even as much of the destructive and tyrannical public-health apparatus improvised in early 2020 has finally been dismantled, even in China. This is one reason why the return of lockdown, perhaps even for new “emergencies” such as “climate,” is entirely plausible, despite the measure’s evident discrediting.

For Agamben, the only “positive dimension” of the situation he contemplated in early 2020 was that “it may be possible that people will start wondering whether their way of life was right in the first place.” The opposite is true today, as we come full circle three years after the remarkable events of early 2020: The only negative dimension of the “return to normal” is the risk that we fall back into the unreflective drift from crisis to crisis that made lockdowns possible.

https://compactmag.com/article/the-prophet-of-covid-tyranny

THE SEX-CHANGE LAWSUITS BEGIN

 Survey data indicate that a high percentage of people who underwent sex-change operations when they were young eventually regret it. The data also suggest that most minors who express gender dysphoria have a multitude of problems, including, in many cases, autism. Yet sex-change clinics around the world frequently hustle disturbed minors into permanent, life-altering chemical regimes and brutally invasive surgery.

Most people, if asked, don’t support sex change operations on minors. But, of course, they aren’t being asked. The bizarre and scientifically illiterate “gender is anyone’s choice” train barrels down the track. Can anything stop it?

Maybe lawsuits can. From the Daily Caller News Foundation:

Chloe Cole, a young woman who once identified as transgender, is suing the medical professionals and hospital that administered sex change procedures to her as a child which she now regrets, according to a complaint her attorneys published Thursday.

What is being done to confused children is appalling:

The Center for American Liberty, Dhillon Law Group and LiMandri and Jonna are suing Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Group and several doctors on Cole’s behalf for their involvement in Cole’s transition, which included puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy between the ages of 13 and 17….

Pause on that for a moment: a double mastectomy between the ages of 13 and 17, not on account of cancer, but on account of social media-driven hysteria. Was there no one to stick up for this poor girl?

Cole had numerous mental health issues when she first began identifying as transgender at age 13, but despite these co-morbidities, medical professionals immediately affirmed her transgender identity and put her on the path to irreversible cross-sex procedures, the complaint alleges.
***
Cole struggled with anxiety, depression, speech difficulties, autism spectrum symptoms, body image issues and confusion about her gender, according to the complaint. She adopted a transgender identity after watching transgender influencers on social media, and when her parents brought her to Kaiser, medical professionals made no attempts to treat her coexisting mental health issues or understand what had led her to identify as transgender, but instead put her on the immediate path to gender transition, the complaint alleges.

I don’t know anything about this case, but what the complaint describes happens often. In England, the Tavistock Clinic, which similarly rushed vulnerable children into irreversible sex change surgery, has been closed down and its methods have been repudiated. Here in the U.S., genital mutilation of minors is still being carried out, at great cost to troubled children and great profit to the hospitals and doctors who participate.

Many, many more lawsuits from detransitioning victims will be filed in years to come. I hope that litigation may bring the current mania for sex changes to a screeching halt, although that is likely too optimistic. I have no idea how strong this particular plaintiff’s claims are. She was a minor, so the surgery presumably was authorized by one or both of her parents. An obvious issue is informed consent: did the medical professionals adequately disclose to the parents the full risks entailed by administration of drugs, followed by sex change operations? It is hard to imagine that they did. Other issues will of course be presented, as well.

Hospitals and doctors, and their insurance companies, will erect every possible legal obstacle to these lawsuits. But sooner or later, some plaintiffs will surmount those barriers and take their cases to juries. If that happens–when it happens–the true scandal flowing from today’s idiotic gender ideology may stand revealed. I hope that massive jury verdicts will bring the “carve them up” era to an end.

A footnote: when Scott and I started writing together in approximately 1990, and when we founded this site in 2002, sex–or gender, the same thing–was the farthest thing from our minds. We never imagined that someday, we would have to write about sex-change operations and mastectomies carried out on 13-year-old girls. Frankly, I am much more comfortable writing about economic data and the like. But unfortunately, the Left has mounted a campaign against America’s youth that it is impossible to ignore. Here, as elsewhere, the Left’s policies are not just misguided but evil, and while we might prefer to avert our eyes, we have no choice but to oppose them, in hopes that some lives can be saved.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/the-sex-change-lawsuits-begin.php

What Democrats’ soft-on-crime insanity does to American families

 Public safety is the foundation of any free society. In the United States, our families deserve to live in safe communities without the constant fear of violent crime and lawlessness threatening their personal security. 

Unfortunately, due to Democrats’ soft-on-crime, defund-the-police agenda, too many Americans have been victimized by violent criminals who are allowed to walk free because Democrat prosecutors won’t even charge them with a crime. 

In our Commitment to America, House Republicans pledged to hold criminals accountable for their actions, support our police departments, and uphold the rule of law across our nation. Safety and security are what the American people expect and deserve from their elected officials. 

Despite what Democrats claim, our growing concerns about public safety are not unfounded. Crime is skyrocketing in major U.S. cities nationwide because Democrats have defunded their police departments, ended cash bail and allowed violent criminals back on our streets to terrorize communities with no more than a slap on the wrist. 

Naturally, these dangerous policies have consequences. More than 15 U.S. cities – including Atlanta, Austin, and St. Paul – saw their 2021 homicide numbers break previous records. 

According to the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s 2022 crime report, homicides have increased by 41% in Chicago, 45% in Philadelphia, and 236% in Portland since 2019. These alarming statistics should serve as a wake-up call for Democrats to reevaluate their failed agenda. However, in our nation’s capital, pro-criminal policies are the extreme left’s gold standard. 

In Washington, D.C., just this year, sexual abuse is up 100%, motor vehicle theft is up 111%, and homicides have increased by 18%. But, just weeks ago, even despite the liberal mayor’s veto, the Washington, D.C. City Council approved legislation to slash prison sentences for the worst offenders, eliminate penalties for a slew of violent crimes, and release scores of dangerous criminals back onto our streets. Sadly, this is the Democrats’ blueprint for America – right in President Joe Biden’s back yard. 

In response to this serious dereliction of duty, both Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to condemn this pathetic law and overturn this dangerous endorsement of criminal behavior. If big-city liberals think they can endanger law-abiding Americans without any pushback, they are gravely mistaken. Republicans will not be silent. 

Amid rising crime and increasing threats against our police, Republicans will always stand with the brave law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities and keep our families safe. 

This is especially vital as we face a war against police officers in our country. Last year, 331 police officers were shot in the line of duty, 62 of whom died from their wounds. We have also seen a 32% increase in police officers killed by gunfire compared to 2020. 

This is unacceptable, and it needs to end. 

Unlike Democrats, Republicans are committed to protecting our families and standing up to the lawlessness that has plagued our cities. Instead of defunding the police, we will give local law enforcement the tools and resources that they need to hire additional officers, which will bolster public safety and reduce crime. Instead of demonizing police, we will praise them for their bravery and resolve. Instead of accepting the Democrats’ soft-on-crime agenda, we will fight it.  

From Louisiana to Iowa, the "Thin Blue Line" protects us all from lawlessness and crime, and Republicans will always back the men and women in blue from the left’s radical, pro-criminal policies. Because criminals do not control our streets. We do. 

Republican Randy Feenstra represents Iowa's 4th congressional district.

Republican Steve Scalise is the U.S. House of Representatives majority leader. He represents Louisiana's 1st Congressional District, serving since 2008. 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/this-is-what-democrats-soft-crime-insanity-does-american-families

The Second Amendment isn't a public health problem

 What is the nation's greatest public health threat? Axios, an online political publication, commissioned a survey by Ipsos asking this and other health questions. The opioid crisis (26%) and obesity (21%) took first and second place overall. That should be no surprise, for they are dire problems, directly or indirectly responsible for much suffering and hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. Opioids in particular, despite being smaller than the others, are alarming for their sudden onset.

What is astounding, however, is what is evident when breaking down the survey answers based on political affiliation. It is Republicans alone who make opioids and obesity the top two concerns. Democrats have entirely different priorities than the average respondent.

Among Republicans, the greatest threat to public health is "opioids/fentanyl" (37%), followed by obesity (25%) and cancer (17%). Those are all reasonable answers that reflect serious health problems.

A plurality of Democrats, on the other hand, lists "gun or firearm access" (35%) as the No. 1 threat to public health.

Of course, "gun access" is not a health problem — not a disease, not a condition, but a constitutional right that can be taken away only through due process. At least 37% of households take advantage of that right, according to the survey. Gun access also does not cause diseases or deaths. People can use guns to cause deaths — out of malice, self-defense, a desire to self-harm, which actually is a health problem, and carelessness .

The second-most common way to die by gunshot, after suicide, is in the commission of a crime. Crime also isn't a health problem. But even if one treats it as a health problem, it does not mean that guns cause crime. Democratic prosecutors who go easy on dangerous criminals cause crime. Even though mass shootings are exceedingly rare, even many of them can be placed at the feet of prosecutors — for example, the Michigan State University shooter would have been in jail or at least deprived of his right to own firearms had he been properly prosecuted for previous crimes and not allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor. The man who roamed the East Coast shooting defenseless homeless people was likewise let off the hook by a liberal prosecutor in northern Virginia, allowed to plead his way out of a kidnapping and attempted rape charge. Such examples abound .

The fentanyl and opioid overdose issue is a genuine and serious health threat. Opioids are extremely addictive, and addiction is common because they have been so dramatically overprescribed. Fentanyl is a deadly threat, far more potent than anything people had seen before. Opioid overdoses killed more than 100,000 people between April 2020 and April 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Likewise, those who gave obesity as the answer are spot on, given the appalling rate of death due to heart disease, the nation's leading killer, complications from diabetes, and other obesity-related ailments. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death.

But every Democrat who claims that the biggest health problem is "gun access" is burying his or her head in the sand on matters of health. Whether this is due to President Joe Biden exacerbating the opioid problem or to ideological hatred that other people have gun rights, 35% of them answered this question as if they did not live in the real world. That's generously assuming that it is reasonable to consider COVID-19 the nation's most serious health risk in 2023 — a dubious proposition, to which another 9% of Democratic respondents subscribe.

It is at least heartening that almost as many Democrats cited real health threats, such as opioids, obesity, and cancer (43% combined), as the most serious health problems facing the nation. But it is clear that Democrats' thinking has been deeply infected by the fallacy that everything is political or that woke Twitter is real life.

Indeed, maybe more people should have offered "social media" in answer to the survey's main question.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/the-second-amendment-isnt-a-public-health-problem

Ascensia adds automated food analysis to glucose monitoring system

 A collaboration between Ascensia Diabetes Care and the Snaq app-based platform is giving new meaning to the phrase, “Say cheese!”

Rather than snapping photos of smiling faces, users of Ascensia’s blood glucose monitors (BGMs) can now point their smartphone cameras at a plate full of food and automatically see the nutritional value of each item.

The partnership will begin with a three-year term, Ascensia and Snaq announced this week. During that time, the Snaq app will connect wirelessly to Ascensia’s Bluetooth-enabled glucose monitors, helping users with diabetes determine the best nutritional options to keep their blood sugar levels within a preferred range.

Ascensia will first roll out access to the Snaq app to customers using its Contour BGMs in the U.S. before expanding into other regions.

The app’s data will also integrate into Ascensia’s GlucoContro.Online platform, which launched in the U.S. last year. It wirelessly takes in readings from diabetes management devices that can then be viewed and analyzed by the user as well as their caregivers and healthcare providers.

“Many of the people we speak to with diabetes are looking for smart, connected technologies that give them the data they need when they need it. Data and technology have a central role in helping people to make treatment decisions, and our collaboration with Snaq will ensure that insights to guide food and meal choice are easily found at the tap of an app,” said Chester Lu, head of BGM digital connected solutions at Ascensia, in the company's press release.

After users snap a photo of a plate of food, the Snaq app’s artificial intelligence automatically identifies the food items and produces a list of the fat, protein and carbohydrate content in each. Throughout the day, the app takes in blood sugar readings from a connected monitor and maps mealtimes over the graph, helping illustrate how certain foods may have impacted the user’s glucose levels.

The app stores each food item logged—along with any subsequent blood sugar spikes—to create a searchable database of common food items and their potential impact on a user’s health. Between that long-term information and the real-time nutritional facts, the app aims to help users learn to select foods that will keep them within their preferred glucose range.

The Snaq app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play marketplace for iPhone and Android smartphones, respectively. In addition to Ascensia’s glucose meters, it can also take in information from continuous glucose monitors like those from Dexcom and Abbott as well as “smart” insulin pens like Medtronic’s InPen.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/ascensia-adds-automated-food-analysis-glucose-monitoring-system

Biden does not plan to visit site of Ohio train derailment

 U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday he has no plans to visit the site of the train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in an Ohio town earlier in February.

The trail derailment in East Palestine prompted the evacuation of thousands of people and ignited health concerns.

"I've spoken with every single major figure in both Pennsylvania and Ohio. So the idea that we're not engaged is simply not there," Biden told reporters on Friday.

Norfolk Southern Corp, the operator of the train, apologized on Wednesday at a CNN town hall event that highlighted residents' concerns about soil and ground water contamination.

The Biden administration has said Norfolk Southern must pay for the damage and clean-up efforts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered company officials to attend town hall events after executives failed to attend an earlier meeting in East Palestine.

The derailment has sparked a political battle and a blame game over railroad safety regulations, with residents voicing deep concern over the long-term health impact of the millions of pounds of carcinogenic chemicals spilled in their town.

Some Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over the incident while some Democrats have pointed to regulations rescinded under former President Donald Trump. Trump, who is campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, visited the area on Wednesday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured the wreckage on Thursday after the Biden administration was criticized for not sending a cabinet official to the site sooner.

The derailment might have been avoided if the railway company's alarm system had given engineers an earlier warning that bearings were overheating, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday with the release of a preliminary investigation.

Earlier on Friday, the House of Representatives Oversight Committee launched a probe into the derailment and sought documents from the U.S. Transportation Department on their response to the incident.

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