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The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides a vital buffer against hunger and poverty for 47.6 million Americans. Using 2013 California Dietary Practices Survey data, we assessed support for policies to strengthen the nutritional influence of SNAP. Among SNAP participants, support ranged from 74% to 93% for providing monetary incentives for fruits and vegetables, restricting purchases of sugary beverages, and providing more total benefits. Nonparticipants expressed similar levels of support. These approaches may alleviate the burden of diet-related disease in low-income populations. (Am J Public Health. 2015;105:1576-1580. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302672)
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aims to alleviate food insecurity and improve the health of low-income children and families.1 With a budget of $80 billion, SNAP currently serves 47.6 million Americans, including more than 20 million children.1,2
Despite recent efforts to promote nutritious food options in SNAP,3,4 there are no established nutritional guidelines for SNAP-eligible foods.5 Obesity and diet-related disease disproportionately affect low-income individuals6-8; thus, public health advocates and researchers have urgently sought to identify policies that could bolster the nutritional influence of SNAP.9-12 So far, monetary incentives show promise: an evaluation of the US Department of Agriculture-funded Healthy Incentives Pilot showed that providing a $0.30 per SNAP dollar incentive for fruits and vegetables resulted in a 25% increase in their consumption levels.13
The objective of this study was to identify strategies that would be perceived as most acceptable to improving the nutritional intake of SNAP participants, using a statewide sample of California adults, including an oversample of SNAP participants.
METHODS
Data were taken from the 2013 California Dietary Practices Survey (CDPS), a randomdigit-dial telephone survey of California households that was administered both in English and in Spanish. Survey respondents included 1505 California adults with listed and unlisted landline telephone numbers and current participants of CalFresh (the statewide name for SNAP).14 CDPS has been administered biennially by the California Department of Public Health since 1989 to evaluate progress toward meeting national dietary and health guidelines. Data were weighted to the 2010 US Census and the 2013 CalFresh population to obtain statewide representative estimates of the general population and CalFresh participants, respectively. The analytic population comprised 889 CalFresh participants and 598 nonparticipants. Respondents whose CalFresh status was unknown (n =18) were excluded.
As assessed in previous...