READING, Pa.- You can buy it cold, but not hot. That\u2019s the current rule under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps millions of Americans pay for groceries.<\/p>\n
Now, a new bill in Washington, D.C. could change that. The \u201cHot Rotisserie Chicken Act\u201d would allow SNAP users to buy one thing that\u2019s currently off limits: a hot, ready-to-eat rotisserie chicken.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s typically not allowed to be used for meals that are prepared hot and served, so you couldn\u2019t go to your local grocery store and get hot fried chicken,\u201d said Jay Worrall, president of Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank.<\/p>\n
This bill does not expand SNAP to restaurants. It does not cover all hot foods. Just one item: rotisserie chicken.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Senator John Fetterman, who co-sponsored the bill, says the change is about making it easier for families to put food on the table.<\/p>\n
At Helping Harvest, leaders say more flexibility helps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know a lot of people, especially senior citizens, who rely on prepared foods bought at the grocery store and for a family or an individual household or a senior to be able to use their benefit in this way,\u201d Worrall said.<\/p>\n
But they say this comes at a complicated time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are right on the horizon of a rather large reduction in SNAP benefits that will reduce the amount in Berks County by over 11 million dollars every month,\u201d Worrall said.<\/p>\n
Meaning even with more options, families may soon have less to spend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect that many more people in Berks and Schuylkill Counties will be coming to food pantries to meet their nutritional needs as SNAP benefits become fewer and harder to access,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For now, the bill is still moving through Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- You can buy it cold, but not hot. That\u2019s the current rule under the Supplemental Nutrition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,10733,8659,4283,28,128,130,129,78186,4610],"class_list":{"0":"post-174307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-food-pantries","10":"tag-helping-harvest-fresh-food-bank","11":"tag-john-fetterman","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-rotisserie-chicken","17":"tag-snap"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}