Melanie Hickcox and Monica Palmer both work at Feeding Missouri, a coalition of Missouri food banks. Melanie is the SNAP project manager, and Monica is the communications manager.
They spoke about some of the myths that exist about SNAP benefits – or food stamps –and how that can detriment older Americans.
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words. You can view more conversations at missourihealthtalks.org.
Monica Palmer: You know when people say, "it's s so easy to get on the food stamp role," that's it's so easy and, you know, "Well, I could just be lazy and live off of food stamps." I've heard people say that.
Melanie Hickcox: Right.
Monica: Like do you realize how hard it is –
Melanie: Hard.
Monica: Just to get approved for food stamps. How many hoops you have to jump through and how many places there are through the process where you would just give up.
Because it's hard –
Melanie: Exactly.
Monica: You don't understand it or you're required to drive 30 miles, and you don't have a car and you have to pay your friend for gas to take you there or whatever, you know…
Melanie: Exactly.
Monica: And that's not even taking into account the shame, the stigma, those kinds of things, you know, one of the things that breaks my heart are the older generation –
Melanie: Yes.
Monica: Who believe that, you know, it's some kind of personal failing to reach out for help because you shouldn't have to.
But, you know, it's there for them. So that they don't have to eat one meal a day and that's it. You've shared before, you know, that some of those older folks, they say that if they take food stamps, they're taking it away from someone else who needs it.
And that's one of the myths I think that is still rampant. I think a lot of people believe that that is true, but it's just not.
Melanie: Yeah, exactly. That's one of the things that I hear almost every time that I'm talking to an older American about food stamps, and probably not surprisingly, that's one of our hardest groups to really target.
Just the word food stamps is such a kind of stigma. So, yeah, it's –
Monica: Especially with the older generation because they're at risk rate, right?
Melanie: Yes.
Monica: They're one of our higher risk - health wise - clients. So, you know, they need to have that the supplemental nutrition, you know, that the SNAP program is there to provide because they're living on a fixed income. They're more likely to be the people buying the shelf stable, really inexpensive, maybe not very nutrient dense food from the grocery store.
And if they had that little bit of extra money from the SNAP program, from food stamps, they could go and they could buy fresh fruit. They could buy, you know, lean meat. They could buy those whole grain breads instead of the cheapest bread that's on sale, you know.
So, these are, you know, older clients they come from a generation where you make do. You just make do, and that's not...
"Making do." Those choices, those coping strategies, are not always the best when it comes to health, and that's how we see a lot of hypertension and diabetes and heart issues - that are diet-related.
And people are making those decisions to kind of modify their diets in a not healthy way to make ends meet –
Melanie: Right.
Monica: You know, much more so I think with older Americans.
