Colorado and Texas are among the states aiming to change what food and drink can be bought with SNAP benefits.
Should Americans on food assistance be able to use that money on soda?
Starting in 2026, the answer in six states will be no. At least six others have proposed similar restrictions, and some states are also disallowing candy purchases.
Each month, more than 40 million low-income Americans use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, to buy a portion of their groceries. Right now SNAP dollars can be used to buy any food or beverage from a grocery store except alcohol or hot food.
Most of the current proposals to eliminate soda from SNAP come from reliably Republican states, but the partisan lines aren't straightforward. New York City applied for a similar exclusion in 2010 and Maine did as well in 2015, but both were denied permission by the Department of Agriculture.
The recent Republican push to ban soda from SNAP coincides with changes to the program's funding and work requirements, via President Trump's policy bill, that could cause millions of Americans to lose benefits.
The renewed soda scrutiny also raises more fundamental questions about the purpose of SNAP: Is restricting what you can buy with food assistance a common-sense public health policy, or an overreach that penalizes poor people?
Capri Sun but not Coke
Kristen Chevrier, a Republican Utah state representative, said she sponsored the state's legislation to get SNAP closer to the mission in its name. "If we are funding foods through SNAP that are void of nutrition, we are basically endorsing those foods as supplemental nutrition," she said.
Even with legislation, changes to state SNAP programs must be approved by the Department of Agriculture. The agency's secretary, Brooke Rollins, has encouraged states to apply, referring to the state efforts as innovative experiments in public health. The health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has often joined in public messaging.
In a news conference announcing the first waivers to exclude soda to be approved by the U.S.D.A., Secretary Rollins said, "It's not a blue state or red state thing; this is Making America Healthy Again working across party lines."
Although the federal government pays for SNAP benefits, states administer the programs and issue Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, similar to debit cards. Starting next year in six states (Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska and Utah), customers using an E.B.T. card for groceries will need to pay separately for soda, as they would today for beer or toilet paper.
The particulars will vary by state. Idaho, Iowa and Indiana, for example, will prohibit the purchase of most candy. Those three states will also prohibit the purchase of Gatorade with SNAP, while Utah and Arkansas will allow it.
Colorado is the only state under Democratic control to apply for a waiver to exclude soda in 2025. Colorado has also proposed expanding SNAP to cover hot foods from grocery stores like rotisserie chicken or soup -- which SNAP currently excludes because they are considered more like restaurant fare than food prepared or consumed at home.
Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, said that the governor "has long believed it would be beneficial to increase healthier food consumption."
The purpose of SNAP
The disagreement over how much control the government should exert over SNAP spending comes down to whether policymakers believe the mission of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is to supplement nutrition or assistance.
Tom Vilsack, who served as agriculture secretary in the Obama and Biden administrations, said SNAP benefits are meant to supplement people's food budgets -- not cover their entire spending.
"It doesn't pay for everyone's food for the entire month," he said. "So what would prevent people from spending their own money on sugary drinks or soda? The notion of restricting it for nutritional purposes really isn't a valid reason."
The average SNAP benefit is $180 a month per person, which typically covers about 63 percent of a person's food budget.
An Agriculture Department survey found that SNAP households spend about 5 percent of their food budget on soda, slightly higher than the 4 percent that non-SNAP households spend. Removing soda from SNAP could deter people from buying sugary drinks because it would have to be paid for from personal funds. But many may decide to do so anyway.
Academics are unsure if removing soda from SNAP would improve public health. Data is scarce: No state has piloted a change, and researchers can't remove people's benefits for a study because of the arbitrary harm it might cause.
Lisa Harnack, a professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, found a way to test the concept by finding people who were eligible for SNAP but not enrolled. She created a "SNAP-like program" that gave some people normal SNAP benefits and gave others similar benefits but excluded soda (participants could still buy whatever other food they wanted with their own money).
Her first study found lower calorie intake and improved nutrition among the people who couldn't purchase soda with their benefits, but her follow-up study did not. She said there was no consensus on what health effect excluding soda would have, only that "there's a consensus that we need more and better research."
Hilary Seligman, who studies public health and nutrition at the University of California, San Francisco, was an author of a paper in 2014 that modeled the impact of removing sugar-sweetened drinks from SNAP. The study found it would probably reduce rates of obesity -- but even so, Professor Seligman said she was concerned the state bans would do more harm than good.
"The problem with soda consumption in the U.S. is not SNAP users," she said. "If you try to solve this problem using SNAP as a lever, so only SNAP people are impacted by it, what we're likely to do is just increase stigma for people who are trying to make ends meet."
Ms. Chevrier, the Utah state representative, said that the move to exclude soda from SNAP "is not targeting anyone" and that she was looking for ways to promote health while protecting taxpayer money. She said other ways to deter soda consumption, including a soda tax, were "ideas worth exploring."
Mr. Vilsack said his preferred alternative was to incentivize healthier eating, in particular by expanding a program often called "double-up bucks." Forty-seven states give SNAP users the option of getting money back after fruit and vegetable purchases at certain locations. SNAP users who buy $10 of vegetables, for example, would receive a $10 credit to purchase more vegetables on their next visit. But the program is limited in scope and has only about 750,000 participating households versus over 22 million households enrolled in SNAP.
The Department of Agriculture seems eager to approve more waivers to exclude soda. An agency spokesperson said it "continues to collaborate extensively with each state on their proposals," though it could give no timeline on future approvals. The waivers that have been approved so far are legally temporary. Utah's waiver, for instance, defines a pilot period of two years that would need to be renewed afterward.
Kathleen Merrigan, who was deputy agriculture secretary under Mr. Vilsack, said she was concerned that the restrictions on soda and snacks were connected to Republican efforts to scale back SNAP overall: "Is this driven by a budget cutting effort, or is this driven by improving the health of Americans? I think that's a really important distinction to ask people."
In 2010, the Agriculture Department under Mr. Vilsack denied a waiver that would have allowed New York City, then under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, to exclude soda from SNAP benefits.
Ms. Merrigan says she now regrets that decision. "It was for a two-year period of time in a discrete place," she said. "And we would have had some data that would help us understand where we are today."