This is a very interesting article.  I can see every point made as a valid one, because the topic is certainly not black and white.  Things that I have learned on this subject:

When we were our poorest, we were our thinnest.  Not because we didn't eat well.  We just cut out any extras.  We ate alot of filling veggies, rice, beans, apples, homemade bread, oatmeal, etc.  (things that cost very little and filled us up a long time.)

Then one year we were able to get a little help from the government in the form of food stamps.  I was SHOCKED at the amount of food money the government gave us that first month.  There was NO way we could ever use that much money -- even for a family as large as ours. It was 5-7 times what we normally would spend.  We found that with all that extra money, we were walking the aisles of the grocery stores, drooling at all the possibilities.  Snack cakes, chips, pop, and all these "treats" that we had never before been able to afford suddenly crept into our diet.  After I put on a few pounds and realized that I was cooking way less and microwaving much more, we put a kabosh on it.  We started living on the amount that we had before.  2 months of food assistance lasted my family 7 months!

I had never felt so good as when my husband got that much-prayed-for job, and we were able to walk into the service office and ask that they close our help file. There was no longer a means to a lifestyle that was unhealthy for my family.  It was easier to make healthy choices when your resources were limited and entirely your own.

That being said, the WIC program was the exact opposite.  For your monthly allotment of milk, eggs, cheese and sugarless cereal, I had to have all my children's fingers poked for blood tests, meet with a nutritionist regularly, and tell the intimate details of my health and welfare to complete strangers.  But at least they were nice about it.

Both programs are designed to do the exact same thing.. but they are run very differently.

When I am in Walmart the first week of the month, it is amazing to see the lines of families who had just gotten their food stamps.  Cases of pop and the largest bags of chips I have EVER seen fill many of the carts.  I never used to understood why they would do this.  Having been there, I can kind of see it now. 

Great discussion you've brought up!