Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed six Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program waivers on Monday to strike sugary drinks and candy as eligible purchases from the program.
Joined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA), Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R-WV), and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, Rollins signed waivers for Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas that will eliminate soft drinks and candy from the SNAP program, while waivers for Colorado and West Virginia will focus on eliminating soft drinks.
Colorado is the first blue state to receive a waiver, highlighting the bipartisan effort of the MAHA movement. “This is not red or blue, Republican or Democrat,” said Rollins. “We are discussing and working with every state.”
Rollins said she hopes the waivers will encourage healthier diets and lifestyles among Americans.
“We are doing something about it. These SNAP waivers are just one piece of the MAHA effort,” said Rollins. “We work so closely together to encourage voluntary commitments to remove artificial food dyes, among other things, from our food supply, and together, we are crafting sensical dietary guidelines for Americans that prioritize whole, healthy, and nutritious foods.”
Makary praises the effort and how it’s bringing the focus back to food and what Americans are feeding their children. “Here we are for the first time ever, not just talking about how to fund our broken healthcare system, but how to fix our broken healthcare system by finally getting at the root issue, and that is the health of the population, starting with children,” he said.
Kennedy also praised the waivers for not forcing taxpayers to pay for unhealthy foods. “U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, with foods that are going to give them diabetes,” he said.
More than 75% of American youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military duty due to obesity, poor physical fitness, or mental health challenges, and more than 350,000 children have been diagnosed with diabetes, said Rollins.
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Rollins previously signed waivers for Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah in June and for Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska in May. Before the waivers, the list of prohibited items for the SNAP program included alcohol, tobacco products, personal hygiene items, and others, according to the USDA website.
All waivers, including those most recently signed, will be implemented beginning in 2026.