Florida is joining a growing list of states that regulate what people receiving government food assistance can buy at the grocery store.
Beginning Monday, Floridians enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known colloquially as food stamps — will no longer be allowed to use the benefit to buy soda, candy or ultra-processed desserts. At least 23 other states have implemented similar restrictions with the approval of the Trump Administration.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, the goal is to make sure taxpayer dollars provide nutritious foods to lower-income individuals and families, rather than certain sugary and highly processed items. The government spends about $102 billion a year on SNAP.
“We cannot continue a system that forces taxpayers to fund programs that make people sick and then pay a second time to treat the illnesses those very programs help create,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a press release in December, when the administration began granting waivers allowing states to ban certain foods.
The SNAP waivers present a policy pivot, one that blends public health goals with financial oversight of tax dollars. Traditionally, federal rules allowed SNAP recipients to buy most grocery items, except things like alcohol. Now, states can obtain waivers to those rules and restrict recipients’ choices.
“[SNAP] was created and enacted at a time when hunger among low-income people was a huge problem,” Chris Edwards, an economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told Straight Arrow News. “The problem now with low-income people when it comes to food is obesity. This is a huge problem.”
Not all public health experts agree. In a 2024 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Benjamin Chrisinger, an assistant professor of community health at Tufts University, argued that restrictions don’t address underlying issues of food insecurity and health disparities. He cited studies that showed unrestricted food benefits lead to better nutrition.
A growing push for Nutrition
SNAP was created with the goal of providing food for low-income households that couldn’t afford all the groceries they needed. The program initially ran from 1939 to 1943, then was revived in the 1960s with the passage of the Food Stamp Act of 1964. The goal was to improve nutrition to those who couldn’t afford it.
But a decade’s worth of USDA data reveals that there is a mismatch between the intention and the reality.
A 2016 USDA study found that 22.6% of SNAP benefits went toward sweet beverages, candy, sugar and prepared desserts.
Power shift
The new policy allowing states to restrict food choices is an outgrowth of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement. It also represents a shift in how this federal welfare program is managed, moving more power to the state level.
The USDA said it is “empowering states with greater flexibility to manage their programs by approving SNAP Food Restriction Waivers.”
“States are the laboratories of democracy, so let some states try it, and then we can compare with the other states,” Edwards told SAN. “It’s a good and simple way to do reform for this.”
When Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the program in December, six states opted in: Hawaii, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Now almost half of the states, most of them right-leaning, have submitted waivers.
“Republicans tend to support stricter eligibility requirements and nutrition-based restrictions,” journalist Lara Salahi wrote in an analysis for the Association of Health Care Journalists. “They argue that these measures could reduce program costs, encourage self-sufficiency, and promote healthier food choices among SNAP recipients.”
Critics say the new guidelines oversimplify complex issues. Banning sugary sweets and sodas will hardly improve overall health issues in the country, they say. Plus, the ban could have broader implications and lead to complicated problems.
Some also worry restrictions stigmatize or punish low-income shoppers by telling them what they cannot buy, interfering with individual choice and rights.
“Any changes to SNAP could affect millions of Americans and have far-reaching consequences for public health and the food industry,” Salahi wrote. “The policies also touch on broader issues of health disparities and access to nutritious food in low-income communities. It also raises questions about the appropriate level of government intervention in personal food choices.”