California Sends Luxury Foods to Welfare Recipients

Salmon, beef, organic produce, and Amy’s Kitchen meals: these are just some of the luxury foods that California welfare recipients can get delivered to their homes each week, for free.

Californians like TikTok user “Lupita” are taking full advantage. Earlier this year, she posted a video of herself opening a taxpayer-funded grocery box, apologizing to her manicurist as she unboxed it by hand. Inside, she found carrots, heads of broccoli, apples, oranges, celery, rice, lettuce, and more.

“Yesterday, I was like, ‘I need some lettuce,’ but the lettuce was like five dollars,” she said. “And look at this. Fresh lettuce! Thank you, God.”

She can also thank Governor Gavin Newsom. As part of his nearly $12 billion Medicaid reform package, welfare recipients—including illegal immigrants—can receive free, “medically tailored” meals and groceries, delivered straight to their door. They can get foods for free that would cost ordinary people a small fortune.

The food service is part of CalAIM, Newsom’s multibillion-dollar Medi-Cal reform package. Signed into law in 2021, CalAIM directs Medicaid dollars to social programs like transitional rent payments and housing deposits. Newsom called it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to completely transform the Medicaid system in California.”

The transformation is working. The most popular of CalAIM’s “Community Supports,” by far, is “medically tailored meals.” That program and a related offering send prepared meals or “tailored” grocery items to qualified Medi-Cal recipients’ homes.

The state makes eligibility easy. Applicants need a qualifying Medi-Cal card, a provider’s recommendation, and an eligible condition. In a 2024 presentation to a Los Angeles nonprofit, Andrew Barrier, a former executive of a California medically tailored food contractor, told his audience how easy it was to enroll.

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From there, the food shows up at recipients’ doorsteps. Medi-Cal pays contractors to deliver the food for up to 12 weeks, after which eligible recipients can re-enroll. And it’s not cheap: across 24 weeks, between food and delivery, a single “medically tailored meals” recipient costs taxpayers more than $1,500.

The food itself drives much of the cost. California contractors offer beef, chicken, organic produce, and more. Barrier’s former company, Project FoodBox, offers Medi-Cal recipients Amy’s Kitchen meals and burritos. Over several months, these foods would cost ordinary Californians hundreds of dollars at the grocery store.

Jocelyn Salala, a chef living in Los Angeles, told City Journal that she signed up for Project FoodBox through Medi-Cal in April after she was laid off. She has since put the deliveries to creative use.

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California’s medically tailored meal and grocery offerings seem to have been inspired by the “Food Is Medicine” movement. Proponents argue that sending people state-funded health foods will reduce hospitalizations, ultimately saving taxpayers money.

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In California, the answer to the second question is easy: yes. About 90 percent of the people receiving CalFresh, the state’s version of food stamps, are also enrolled in Medi-Cal. At the end of his presentation, Barrier told the audience that such people could receive medically tailored food and keep their existing welfare benefits.

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Companies across the country are cashing in on the Food Is Medicine movement. California-based contractors like Project FoodBox and Project Open Hand have raked in millions of Medicaid dollars. Between 2022 and 2024, companies nationwide made nearly $100 million billing Medicaid code S9977, an unspecified “meals” code that includes medically tailored food.

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