The Food Stamp Diet: Increasingly Popular, but How Healthy?

Federal dietary guidelines recommend five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day, with an emphasis on dark green, orange and leafy vegetables. But a study by the American Dietetic Association of food shoppers in California suggests that meeting the fruit-vegetable guidelines would eat up 43-70 percent of a low-income family's total food budget. That certainly doesn't leave much left over for other recommended, and often expensive foods, including proteins, dairy, healthy fats or grains -- and it also represents a significant jump over what the average American household spends (15-18 percent of its food budget) on fruits and vegetables.

Skimping on fruits and vegetables for cheaper carbohydrates, fast foods and starches has its costs, as a recent joint study from the University of Michigan and Ohio State University suggests. Researchers found that Americans who used food stamps had an average body mass index 1.15 points higher than those who didn't -- and they noted that women accounted for almost all of that difference.

With more than 12 percent of the population using SNAP (as well as the 17 million U.S. households operating in a state of perennial food insecurity, where they are either on the verge of running out of food or do run out of food) providing additional credits to buy fruits and vegetables or to be used at farmers' markets could have a significant impact not only on the national health, but on obesity-related health care costs.