KFC and Taco Bell Want Food Stamps.

After their success in Arizona, Michigan, and California, the fast food industry is now lobbying to change food stamp rules in Kentucky to allow food stamps to be used on fast food.

Yum! Brands, parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, is trying to convince Kentucky politicians to change the rules and allow consumers to buy buckets of chicken and chalupas with their food stamps. Right now, users are only allowed to spend stamps at grocery stores and mini-marts. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are eating healthy but it does at least provide more healthy options than KFC ever could. 

Allowing users to spend their stamps on fast food could be devastating for Kentucky’s health. Research indicates that people on food stamps have an average of 1.16 to 1.96 points higher BMI than non-food stamp users.

To make matters worse, the number of food stamp users is dramatically increasing as the economy continues to suffer. About 14.5% of all Americans are on food stamps. This is up from about 8.5% in 2007. This increase means 44 million people are now using food stamps, nearly 20 million MORE than 4 years ago and Yum! Brands stands to make a killing if they can tap into this.

More poor people means more food stamps which likely means more obesity, even without fast-food options. We don’t need KFC and McDonalds to make things even worse and we don’t need more money going into the industry’s pockets.