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Evaluating Equity Critiques in Food Policy: The Case of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Anne Barnhill  and
Katherine F. King
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Extract

As concerns about the negative health effects of unhealthy eating and overweight/obesity increase, so too do efforts to combat obesity. Both the federal government, as well as state and local governments, have proposed and implemented a variety of healthy eating and obesity prevention policies. Many of these policies are controversial, facing objections that range from the practical (e.g., the policy will not succeed at improving people's diets) to the ethical (e.g., the policy is paternalistic or inequitable). In this paper, we consider one such policy — restrictions on food assistance programs that are meant to improve participants’ diet — and one criticism of these policies, that they are inequitable. We take as our primary example the recent, unsuccessful effort by New York State to exclude sweetened beverages from the items eligible for purchase in New York City with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps).

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Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , Spring 2013 , pp. 301 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2013

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