Well, I live in a major metropolitan area so I have access to things like Walmart, but I can (and do) buy 20lb of rice for around $8, 20lb of potatoes for aroun

Well, I live in a major metropolitan area so I have access to things like Walmart, but I can (and do) buy 20lb of rice for around $8, 20lb of potatoes for around $8, and 5 dozen eggs for $6.50. That's an awful lot of calories (7k from potatoes, 12k from the rice, 4.7k from the eggs), with good carbohydrate, fat, and protein availability - about 4 days worth for a family of 3 eating at 2k calories/day/each - for around $22-$23, and it's going to leave you a lot more full than $23 worth of soda and juice. If you want to go for straight caloric juicing then you just replace some potatoes with vegetable oil in the budget and cook extensively with it. A gallon costs ~$6 and contains a whopping 31,000 calories, and fattier foods tend to leave you feeling more full. I've spent a significant portion of my adult life stretching my grocery budget, and while I'm fortunate enough to not have to do so by necessity right now, I've learned that it's very possible to eat well for a fraction of what most people expect. You're very right that $23.80 isn't a whole lot for a family of 3, which rather reinforces the accusation that always underlies this kind of article - that that $23.80, which is so meager, represents a significant chunk of the low-income family's already-meager grocery spending power, which already isn't enough, and is being spent on liquid sugar rather than more nutritious alternatives. To suggest that it doesn't matter in the budgeting because it's a small number just handwaves away the fact that these families are already struggling to buy enough food. For the record: I'm of the opinion that we should let people buy whatever they please with their SNAP benefits and seek to offer education to those on SNAP about how to spend their entitlements in the most cost- and nutrition-effective ways. Nobody likes feeling hungry. Some people are going to make poor decisions about how they spend those funds, but it's a fool's errand to try to police that.