A few months ago, I bought a food stamp on eBay.
For $14 plus $4.50 (shipping), the $5 coupon was mailed from Lafayette, Louisiana to my home in Rochester, New York. From 1985, the eBay seller stated. If the child I was in 1985 could peek into the future and see herself spending $18.50 on a slip of paper that represented everything wrong with her life, she’d roll her eyes and say I’m soft in the head. Maybe I am.
These days, families like the one I grew up in receive “electronic benefit transfers” (EBT) that are barely distinguishable from credit cards. Kids no longer have to take cover at the gumball machines while their mothers pay with embarrassingly cartoonish pastel-colored money. Even still, the debate over the federal provision of food benefits, as well as the shame of requiring and receiving them, persist.
What we’ve come to think of as food stamps began after the widespread unemployment and crop surpluses of the Depression. The initial federal response of paying farmers to burn unsold food—a wildly unpopular move—gave way to the purchase and distribution of those surpluses to those in need. This approach helped farmers and the hungry but did nothing to relieve failing grocery stores. To remedy this, the government piloted a program offering food coupons to those in need in my hometown of Rochester, New York in 1939. While still prioritizing the allocation of food surpluses, the coupons incentivized the purchase of food from local stores.
The program was a resounding success. It was expanded and continued until World War II, when it underwent a brief hiatus before being revived as President Kennedy’s first executive act in 1961. Kennedy’s program uncoupled food stamps from the distribution of surplus food and gave rise to the system of government assistance we know today. The program’s benefits and participation have been expanded by both parties over the decades, with roughly 42 million low-income Americans relying on food stamps in 2025. The men and women trading blue coupons for slabs of butter and cauliflower stalks in 1939 might not recognize the program today.
But their children would. As important as it is to discuss food stamp benefits, to debate and decide how to encourage the best nutrition for all Americans—especially those who disproportionately suffer the effects of poor-quality food—the stigma of food stamps remains. I promise you: no child wants to be poor in the wealthiest country on earth in 2025, just as in 1939.
This brings me back to my eBay food stamp. The same coupon I prayed no one would see me swap for bread and milk at Louie’s corner store sits openly on my desk today. Purple-inked. Featuring the Liberty Bell and Jefferson. Don’t get me wrong, a food stamp still represents the empty cupboards and humiliation of poverty. But it also symbolizes our ongoing attempt toward, and capability for, collective care. Despite America’s frustrating complications, shame and hunger need not have the final word.
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Art by Lara Schaberg
