Republican-led states, joined by a lone blue outlier in Colorado, are taking the lead in restricting soda, candy, and other sugary products from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), marking a sharp shift in the politics of food policy. The push comes under the banner of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative—a campaign that has scrambled traditional partisan lines and brought unlikely allies to the table.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Secretary Brooke Rollins, has already approved 12 state waivers allowing pilot programs to block SNAP dollars from buying certain sugary drinks, energy drinks, and candy. Most of the participating states—Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia—are Republican strongholds. Colorado is the exception, its waiver framed by Governor Jared Polis (D) as a public health measure to combat obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.
Kennedy, while not overseeing SNAP directly, has been the public face of the effort, arguing that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize unhealthy purchases. “If you want to buy sugary soda, you ought to be able to do that,” Kennedy said, “but the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it.”
Supporters point to federal data showing sugary drinks as the leading source of added sugars in Americans’ diets. Critics counter that there’s little concrete evidence SNAP soda bans lead to measurable improvements in health outcomes, and they warn such restrictions could become a political wedge to shrink the program entirely.
Anti-hunger advocates argue that policing grocery carts is paternalistic and stigmatizing, while some nutrition experts stress that any restrictions should be paired with expanded access to healthier food—something most of the red-state waivers don’t include.
The political irony is hard to miss. Just a decade ago, soda regulations were a Democratic talking point—former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempted ban on oversized sugary drinks was derided by Republicans as classic “nanny state” overreach.
Now, with MAHA’s healthy-eating message catching on in conservative legislatures, it’s GOP lawmakers pushing to limit SNAP purchases, often alongside broader efforts to cut federal nutrition spending.
That tension has fueled skepticism from groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which warns the bans may be more about trimming budgets than improving diets. Others, like policy director Priya Fielding-Singh at George Washington University, say the bans can’t be separated from the broader Republican agenda, which includes deep proposed cuts to SNAP benefits in the GOP’s new tax package.
For now, these waivers are strictly pilot programs—a testing ground both for the health claims and the politics. Kennedy predicts more Democratic governors will follow Polis’s lead, even if they shy away from the MAHA label. As Rollins put it while signing Colorado’s waiver, “This is not red or blue, Republican or Democrat… healthy eating should be bipartisan.”
