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If providing healthy, nutritious food for folks who are down on their luck is the goal, then the current systems in place are going about it all wrong. For the right way to do this, we should adopt the example of the many and varied food banks that are open around the nation. There is an organization, Feeding America, that is on the right track.

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Nearly one out of five children in the United States are food insecure, according to the latest report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture – an issue that Feeding America’s CEO said is something that could unite the country during these times of division. 

“This is one of the things that we can all agree on at a time when we’re being torn apart in lots of different ways,” Claire Babineaux-Fontenot told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview from Chicago, where Feeding America is headquartered.

“Feeding America is a network that spans the whole country, where we’re dedicated to ensuring that people have the food that they need to thrive,” she said.

This is how we should feed people. Not with a SNAP card that can be used to buy junk — chips, pop, candy, frozen pizzas, and the like. There must be limits, and for those who complain that we “shouldn’t tell people what they can and can’t eat,” we can only reply, “When the taxpayers are picking up the tab, we sure as hell can!”

Not to downplay the work that Feeding America or other similar organizations are doing; indeed, this is precisely how this kind of thing should be done. If people are having trouble paying for groceries, they should go to a food bank, whether it be a private charity or a government program, there to be given clean, safe, healthy foods. No more buying chips, candy, and pop on the taxpayer’s dime. No more take-and-bake pizzas, no more gas station burritos.

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If reforming this system is the goal — and it should be — then people on these programs should be given monthly 8 1/2″ x 11″ papers marked “GOVERNMENT FOOD VOUCHER,” which allows them, say, one 25-pound bag of rice, one 25-pound bag of dry beans, some lean turkey, an assortment of fresh vegetables — that sort of thing. A tad embarrassing? Yes, it should be. The incentive should be to get off of public assistance, not to make a career of it.

One of the primary goals should be to prevent this kind of thing:

Or this:

Or this:

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The idea of the food pantry has always been the right answer. If people are going hungry, we should be, at a minimum, ensuring they are getting clean, healthy, nutritious foods — not junk. Not on the taxpayer’s dime. And if you game the system by, say, selling food, you’re cut off. Permanently. If that sounds heartless, well, we’ve got 35 trillion reasons to be heartless with people defrauding the American taxpayers.

Maybe this is something that a newly re-elected President Trump could put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work on.