I have dealt with hundreds of people receiving food stamps or SNAP throughout my life. When it was called food stamps, the recepients received 'coupons' in dollar values to buy their food. It was considered embarassing to whip out the booklet and pay for your groceries. Now, everything is on an EBT card. People get all their benefits on that card. Since it looks like a credit card, and in most grocery stores here all you need to do is hit EBT on the pinpad, no one really knows that you receive food stamps.
There is more than one type of person receiving snap benefits. There are many many people who really do struggle and need those benefits in order to survive. I see them and I know they are trying thier best. Then there are the people who use their benefits to get all the 'good stuff'. Lobsters, good steaks, seafood and the like are put into their carts right after the first of the month. Usually they have better cars than I do and are wearing more jewlery than I own. Some of these people have 'boyfriends or girlfriends' who live with them and this is really free cash for food. There are also people who sell their food stamps for 20-75 cents on the dollar. I could go on and on and on but I won't.
There has been a solution to the problem in another country. I admit the country is smaller but this country has been able to make sure all the residents eat and they eat wholesome fresh food right from the farms. Here is a link to one of the articles I have my students read. I am all for feeding the hungry and spend many hours a week making sure those who are hungry get food. I think the US COULD enact some of these programs to allow the hungry to eat and if the US was able to enact something like this, the cost would be so much less.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/the-city-that-ended-hunger
From Wikepeida:
Food as a right
In 1993, under mayor Patrus Ananias de Souza, the city started a series of innovations based on its citizens having the "right to food". These include, for example, creating farmers' markets in the town to enable direct sales, and regularly surveying market prices and posting the results across the city.[29] The city's process of participatory budgeting was linked with these innovations, as a result of which the infant mortality rate was reduced by 50% in a decade.[30][31] There is also some evidence that these programs have helped support a higher quality of life for the local farmers partnering with the city, and that this may also be having positive effects on biodiversity in the Atlantic Rainforest around the city.[31][32] The city's development of these policies garnered the first "Future Policy Award" in 2009, awarded by the World Future Council, a group of 50 activists (including Frances Moore Lappé, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, and Youssou N'Dour[33]) concerned with the development and recognition of policies to promote a just and sustainable future.
The city has also undertaken an internationally heralded project called Vila Viva ("Living Village" in Portuguese) that promises to "urbanize" the poorest areas (favelas), relocating families from areas with high risk of floods and landslides, but keeping them in the same neighborhood, paving main avenues to allow public transportation, police and postal service to have access to those areas. And all the work is done with 80% of locals, reducing unemployment and increasing family income.[34][35] Former mayor Fernando da Mata Pimentel was nominated for World Mayor in 2005 on the strength of these and other programs.[34]