It’s no secret that Michelle Obama has made herself into the unelected food czar when it comes to what our children eat in schools across the nation. It is also no secret that kids across the nation have shown their disdain for the food that FLOTUS Obama and her minions have forced onto the menus of our nation’s schools.

Now comes another proposed food-control program that Mrs. Obama supports. This time the target of her need for control is the sector of the public who receive food stamps. In a recently released report entitled “Approaches for Promoting Healthy Food Purchases by Snap Participants,” an organization called ICF International reports on its research. The committee sought to develop ideas on how the government can force SNAP participants who use Electronic Benefit Transaction (EBT) cards (the modern version of “food stamps”) to buy more fresh produce, whole grains and other healthy consumables. In return, the ICF was paid $999,891 for its efforts. (Way to keep it below a million dollars, ICF!)

What ICF proposes is for grocery stores to have segregated shopping carts of a designated color for use solely by consumers using EBT cards. Those carts would, in effect, be “smart carts” which would monitor what card users put into their carts. It would then talk to the shopper and give them clues on what to buy or not to buy. It would also give them verbal praise when they chose a set amount of healthy products. The idea is that after receiving enough praise, benefits recipients will choose tofu over hamburger without having o be praised. Pavlov himself would drool over this idea.

It is estimated that the cost to outfit each grocery store with the equipment necessary to allow the First Lady to control the minds purchases of low-income shoppers would be about $30,000. Estimates are that for a chain of stores such as Safeway (which is common in the D.C. area), it would cost about $40,000,000 for the hundreds of stores to be equipped.

Naturally, this begs the question: Who would bear this cost? Well, if the government is willing to give $50,000,000 to a Texas company to renovate a resort hotel to house 600 illegal alien children, perhaps it will also give away free money to Safeway, Giant, Kroger, Publix, HEB, and the hundreds of other chains of groceries across the nation so that they can buy the tricked-out talking shopping carts for SNAP program participants. (Ignore the fact that the Baptist organization withdrew its request for funds to overhaul the resort after backlash from across the nation. Maybe those unused funds can be used to supply smart shopping carts to 15 grocery stores.)

Will EBT card users fall for this behavioral conditioning tactic? And will those who voted for Obama continue to be enthralled with him when his wife starts dictating what they can and cannot buy at the grocery store? Or perhaps they finally will understand the true meaning of the saying: ” A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.” In this case, the giving of food results in the loss of freedom to choose what to eat. After all, the government knows better than do we what is good for us. And they tell us so every day.