“Is it okay if I take two cans of beans today?” a food pantry shopper asked me recently as I was volunteering at one of my favorite local food pantries.

“You can actually take as many as you like- this whole room is unlimited,” I was happy to respond. The shopper’s eyes grew big, and they grabbed two more cans- totaling four of the kidney beans, and excitedly moved down the line. Other shoppers who were clearly regulars moved more confidently, some bypassing the canned goods entirely while others took several flats of the beans in my section. I estimate we averaged about three cans of each item per household for the day, although amounts ranged wildly among individuals.

Allowing this freedom of choice for shoppers is a radically controversial practice in the food banking community. There is an archaic, unsubstantiated fear that food pantry shoppers (and welfare recipients in general), are always seeking to exploit the system.

Setting limits on foods is often considered essential to protect from abuse. This attitude is based on the fundamental belief that food insecurity is a personal failing- that America is the land of opportunity where anyone can succeed with enough determination- and that poverty results from poor judgement, moral weakness, or a lack of effort.

This attitude justifies the strict policies that structure American anti-hunger programs.

Despite the rarity of welfare abuse, every conversation I initiate on the subject inevitably produces someone arguing with conviction that any misuse of welfare is intolerable, and we need stricter controls to prevent it. They’ve internalized the notion that welfare recipients have poor judgement which led them to poverty and need careful supervision to keep them on the right track.

This argument reinforces my belief that the fundamental problem with America’s anti-hunger culture is not that we’re short of resources, but that we have developed a system that focuses on punitive action and mistrust instead of solving the problem.

The focus on welfare abuse is the impetus for policies like time limits and work requirements for SNAP, and quantity and attendance limits at food pantries.

Rather than focusing on meeting the need or ending hunger, anti-hunger policies limit access to resources and deliberately ensure that they’re inadequate.

Arguments in favor of strengthening these limitations are justified by concerns about money wasted- that misused funds are lost opportunities to support those who “truly need it.” However, this argument doesn’t hold up. It’s not really about the money.

If we’re worried about everyone meeting their responsibilities when it comes to government funding, why does the discussion focus on welfare? There are hundreds of other examples of “wasted” federal funds with much higher price tags.

For example, wealthy Americans may deprive the US of up to $175 billion dollars a year in tax evasion. I have yet to hear someone concerned about welfare fraud express any frustration about rich people abusing the system, even though the impact is significantly higher than a few misspent SNAP dollars.

Why do we treat the person with an EBT card with more suspicion than we do the person driving a Lamborghini?

Fundamentally, our national consciousness views poverty as an indicator of immorality, and by institutionalizing this conviction, we’ve hobbled ourselves in the fight against hunger.

Limiting anti-hunger resources both perpetuates and reinforces the idea that people experiencing hunger are corrupt and looking to exploit the system. This is why we see discomfort with the idea that people in poverty have access to all the food they need. We still believe they haven’t “earned” it.

Anti-hunger organizations at every level need to examine their policies to see where they have internalized and institutionalized the attitude that people facing food insecurity can’t be trusted. Until our focus is on ending hunger instead of enforcing our narrow idea of morality, we’ll never be able to solve this problem.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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