The Health Divide: Will SNAP junk food bans make people healthier — or hungrier?
Author(s)
Image
(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Published on
April 13, 2026
Twenty-two states are moving to restrict what people can buy with their food benefits, targeting soda and candy in a huge, uncontrolled policy experiment backed by little evidence.
In April 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins invited governors to request federal approval to test ways to encourage healthier eating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by limiting purchases of sugary foods and drinks. Under the banner of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, the federal government swiftly approved requests.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) approvals turned a controversial idea into a string of projects stretching from Hawaii to Virginia, affecting millions of low-income Americans.
Such bans may seem logical. Some policymakers across the political spectrum have long argued that the government shouldn’t support people’s purchases of clearly unhealthy products, especially soda.
Critics have countered that SNAP food bans don’t aim to improve the health of low-income people but seek to punish them and drive them to drop crucial government benefits.
Even as the federal government promotes these restrictions in the name of health, it has made massive cuts to the program’s budget and expanded stringent work requirements. SNAP enrollment fell by 6% — 2.5 million people — between July and December 2025, and the drop-off will accelerate as the full force of these sweeping changes takes effect.
Nine states have already implemented the SNAP food bans. A lawsuit against the USDA, filed in March on behalf of SNAP recipients, seeks to block the new rules in five states, so some plans are on hold.
SNAP benefits may not be used to buy alcohol, but the USDA has never before allowed states to prohibit purchases of other drinks or foods because of concerns it would push people off the program. That has made it difficult to assess the impact of restrictions, and research is sparse.
In the most comprehensive review to date, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis searched five leading databases of scientific literature and found only seven studies of the issue. They included simulation models and short-term randomized controlled experiments with low-income participants. The results were mixed.
The modeling studies predicted that excluding soda and other sweetened beverages would reduce purchases of those items and improve diets. One of the studies also suggested the bans could reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes over 10 years.
The controlled studies, too, showed that when a product can’t be bought with food assistance, people buy a little less of it. In one study, household purchases of sugary beverages declined by an average of $2.66 per week. Only two of the studies took the next step and explored whether people then eat better in general, but found no meaningful change in diet quality. Perhaps, the researchers theorized, eliminating a few cans of soda a week isn’t enough to make much difference. Or, people may have continued to buy soda and sweet snacks with their own money or chosen alternatives that weren’t much healthier.
The USDA has framed the new state initiatives as pilot programs, generally approved for two years, that will answer questions about the impact of these bans. By law, such projects must include evaluations, and historically the agency has demanded rigorous ones. But many states have received approval with only cursory, preliminary evaluation proposals.
Nebraska, for example, offered a single paragraph saying the state will survey a sample of SNAP participants quarterly about their spending habits, and work with retailers to review purchases. The state also said it will publicize the restrictions through SNAP-Ed, a program the federal government has eliminated.
The USDA did not lay out strict evaluation protocols, or a clear set of metrics, benchmarks or outcomes. That left states to devise their own approaches. These vary so widely it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get a broad picture of the benefits and consequences of the policies.
“We should be able to say to every state, ‘You have to collect the same data. We will gather it at the national level and be able to make some generalizations,’” said Kate Bauer, associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan and director of its new Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health Policy. “Coordination is critically important, and that’s not what’s happening here.”
Monitoring spending habits and retail records will tell us what we already know, Bauer said — that people won’t use SNAP to buy soda if it’s prohibited. “What we want to know," she said, "is did it change dietary intake? Did it change health outcomes? Were there unintended outcomes, like stigma or discrimination?”
Until recently, questions like these might have been answered through other channels, even without state investigations. But the administration has weakened, and in some cases dismantled, mechanisms for measuring significant shifts in food policy by cutting funding for health research — especially studies of marginalized communities — and by ending the annual Household Food Security Survey, widely regarded as the best tool for assessing food access.
Journalists can fill in some of the gaps. What are SNAP recipients buying instead? How do they feel about the rules? Are retailers promoting drinks and snacks that are still permitted but only marginally healthier? Are grocers — small ones especially — dropping out of SNAP rather than puzzling through the restriction details, making it even harder for people to get food in many communities of color and rural areas?
Journalists also can help consumers understand what they can no longer buy with SNAP.
The USDA let each state decide which products to restrict. GreenChoice, a company that tracks food buying habits, has released a state SNAP restriction tracker showing that Utah and West Virginia restrict soda only. Oklahoma prohibits soda and candy. Louisiana restricts soda, candy and energy drinks. Florida adds processed, pre-packaged desserts to that list. Iowa prohibits the purchase of all taxable foods. All told, the tracker estimates that 163,934 products are now off limits.
Figuring out what’s allowed can be baffling for consumers. The Texas Tribune offered a primer as that state’s restrictions took effect April 1. SNAP spending is no longer allowed on sweetened drinks that contain 5 grams or more of added sugar per serving or any artificial sweetener; candy, including nuts, fruits or raisins coated in chocolate, yogurt or caramel; and ice cream, sherbet and other frozen desserts with more than 50% fruit juice by volume.
The list goes on, and other states have similar ones.
“On a personal consumer level, the rules are ridiculous,” Bauer said.