Statement from BMSG director Dr. Lori Dorfman on the Center for Digital Democracy’s report, ‘Does Buying Groceries Online Put SNAP Participants at Risk? How to Protect Health, Privacy, and Equity’
Thursday, July 16, 2020The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (formerly food stamps), is one of our nation’s greatest success stories because it puts food on the table of hungry families and money in the communities where they live so, together, they thrive. With COVID-19, the USDA must work to make it easier for grocers to get the food families need to their doorstep. That means families should be able to use their SNAP benefits while shopping for groceries online. Seems normal enough, especially now that everyone is having groceries delivered. But the Center for Digital Democracy has found that the simple act of shopping for groceries online can put SNAP recipients at risk for exposure to manipulative marketing and online surveillance via “massive, ongoing data collection and personalized targeting.”
For decades, research has documented how aggressive food and beverage marketers bombard communities of color with a disproportionate number of ads for sugary, high-fat, salty foods and drinks. For example, according to the Rudd Center, Black kids of all ages see more than twice as many TV ads for sugary drinks and energy drinks as their white counterparts. The products most often marketed to kids of color — fast food, candy, sugary drinks, and snacks — are directly linked to diabetes and heart disease, the diseases most likely to kill them as adults. Many companies are advertising this junk more often, not less, despite the well-documented health consequences. And this marketing gets more intense and personalized online.
The legacy of systemic racism, like redlining and other mechanisms for keeping fresh and healthy foods out of low-income regions and communities of color, also gets magnified online when that history predicts the ads delivered to online shoppers. In a world where systemic racism makes it hard to raise a healthy family, food marketing — online and offline — makes it worse.
Shopping for groceries should not put your family in danger of being hounded by marketers intent on selling products that harm health. Especially in the time of coronavirus when everyone must stay home to keep themselves and their communities safe, the USDA should put digital safeguards in place so that SNAP recipients can grocery shop without being manipulated by unfair marketing practices. USDA could — and should — go further and ensure that any marketing associated with SNAP is for foods and drinks that foster health, not disease.