This week, during a “Great American Farmers Market,” United States Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed waivers allowing six states — West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas — to restrict the use of SNAP benefits for soda and candy. These join six others — Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah — that have already had waivers signed this year.
The waivers usher in a new, if complicated, era in food policy. As states across the country, from Swig-guzzling Utah to the Mountain (Dew) state of West Virginia, adjust welfare purchasing categories, they highlight questions of health equity and personal responsibility and underscore a fascinating set of paradoxes that define the Trump era.
Paradox one: the legislators moving to restrict the purchasing power of SNAP (i.e., the federal government’s “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program”) are mostly Republicans, but Democrats have historically been more willing to use the so-called “nanny state” to shape dietary behavior. (Think of Michael Bloomberg pushing for similar restrictions as mayor of New York.) Republicans, by contrast, have often leaned libertarian on interference in individual consumption choices.
Another paradoxical twist: on the one hand, taking soda off SNAP seems traditionally Republican, insofar as it limits what taxpayer dollars can fund, and promotes personal responsibility. After all, it’s not saying the poor can’t have soda; just that they should buy it with their own hard-earned money, reflecting “Yankee work ethic” conservatism. On the other hand, the move ultimately hurts “Big Soda,” and Republicans have long been seen, whether fairly or unfairly, as closer to corporate interests. All of a sudden, Democrats want to save corporations’ bottom lines?
Yet while these dynamics seem contradictory, they reveal an encouraging truth: this problem doesn’t fall along traditional partisan lines. It has a bipartisan appeal, reflected by Colorado’s participation and Bloomberg’s earlier efforts. Public opinion reflects this, too: across political lines, most Americans support stronger regulation of unhealthy foods. A new study from the Center for Excellence in Polling on behalf of End Chronic Disease found that 63% of voters support limiting SNAP to food purchases with “high nutritional value.”
Second, these policies are not mere technocratic paternalism meeting populist frustration, but valid responses to public health and taxpayer concerns. In other words, they’re common sense. While some researchers say the data isn’t conclusive that restrictions reduce obesity, they acknowledge they lean that way. Meanwhile, no one actually stands to lose, except “Big Soda,” which has profited off government-subsidized sugar for long enough.
Other objections include the head-scratching idea that removing soda from SNAP somehow “stigmatizes” low earners. But that’s a patronizing cop-out, as if setting basic standards for spending public money is somehow a moral judgment.
Finally, there’s pushback from folks like Tom Vilsack, former agriculture secretary under Obama and Biden, who has suggested that because people can still buy soda with their own money, removing it from SNAP eligibility is futile. But Vilsack misses the point, which is not to ban soda altogether but to stop taxpayers from subsidizing it.
Meanwhile, what’s unfolding in states like Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, where lawmakers approve SNAP waivers and consider legislation on food dyes, nutritional awareness, and more, isn’t a top-down directive, despite public signings in D.C. It results from grassroots action: parents, doctors, educators, scientists, and everyday citizens showing up at state capitols and demanding action.
They’re responding to sobering realities: American life expectancy is declining for the first time in modern history. Today’s children may live shorter, unhealthier lives than their parents. That’s why citizens testify on SNAP reforms, chemical additives, physical-education standards, and nutritional labeling.
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Of course, there’s resistance along the way. When student activist Grace Price testified about SNAP soda purchases in Texas, a lobbyist from the American Heart Association defended sugary drinks, a stance the organization later retracted. Weeks later, Riley Gaines said she’d been asked to promote pro-soda messaging as part of a covert influencer campaign. (She declined, earning a public thank-you from HHS Secretary Kennedy.) And in Kentucky, at a recent task-force meeting, a beverage lobbyist claimed there was no link between soda and obesity, contradicting testimony from End Chronic Disease CEO Kelly McKenna and nutrition scientist Dr. Ty Beal.
But Americans remain focused. The findings in the End Chronic Disease poll corroborate data collected earlier this summer, when Axios-Ipsos found that 87% of survey respondents want the government to do more to make food safe. Removing soda from SNAP is a meaningful step in that direction. Far from government overreach, it merely helps ensure that when taxpayers help the underprivileged buy food, those purchases don’t sabotage health outcomes.
Nora Kenney is the communications director at End Chronic Disease.