Q: Answer the question from the given passage. Your answer should be directly extracted from the passage, and it should be a single entity, name, or number, not a sentence.
Passage: The Daily Mail newspaper reported in 2012 that the UK government's benefits agency was checking claimants' 'Sky TV bills to establish if a woman in receipt of benefits as a single mother is wrongly claiming to be living alone' – as, it claimed, subscription to sports channels would betray a man's presence in the household. In December, the UK’s parliament heard a claim that a subscription to BSkyB was ‘often damaging’, along with alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke was proposing the payments of benefits and tax credits on a 'Welfare Cash Card', in the style of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that could be used to buy only 'essentials'. Question: What could the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program purchase?
A:
essentials