American Welfare / Benefits aren't that generous, but it is most likely covering a lot of the housing and medical for these folks. Also having watched the show, a lot of these folks live in what are cheap areas of States or in old family homes, sometimes a combination of both. So that helps a bit.
Food costs aren't crazy high in the States if you just want to get fat. You could probably eat like them for $20 - 30 a day if you didn't care about food quality.
Also a ton of enabling on those shows. Parents, kids, brothers, sisters, spouses all kicking up to those fat fucks, like they're Gods or something.
This is my most hated episode of the ones I've seen -
.
In a perfect World, at the end, they should've rolled him into the street where some Pygmies would've butcher him like a hippo at a village feast.
That guy was just an awful fat asshole.