Encouraging Healthy Food Choices in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) : Examining Financial and Other Incentives to Change Purchasing Patterns

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), once known as the Food Stamp Program, is at the very heart of the nation’s nutrition safety net, serving, in 2013, more than one in seven Americans who are struggling to put food on the table.

As the United States assesses the many approaches to battling the obesity epidemic that affects all segments of its population, there is growing interest in a deeper understanding of how the SNAP program can address the importance of improved diets for SNAP clients. While research to date suggests that obesity is no more prevalent among the SNAP population than the broader population, we know that other diet-related illnesses are more prevalent. It has long been a goal of SNAP to empower its participants to make the healthiest possible food choices when confronting a limited budget. With this in mind, how might SNAP make use of new means to encourage healthier food choices?

This Altarum Institute Policy Roundtable will examine innovative approaches, including financial incentives, to encourage healthy food choices by SNAP program participants. We will also examine the added economic benefit that can occur when more SNAP dollars are spent on local food and circulate in the local economy. Speakers from Altarum’s Center for Food Assistance and Nutrition, the Fair Food Network, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation will discuss what is being tested and what is known to be working in this critical effort to improve health status through healthier food purchases supported by SNAP.