The Trump administration on Monday approved six additional states seeking to ban food stamp recipients from purchasing processed food.
Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Texas and Florida received federal waivers to adjust Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) guidelines outlawing the purchase of junk food with state funds in 2026.
Colorado was the first blue state to adopt the measure.
“SNAP is a supplemental nutrition program meant to provide health food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Monday before signing the waivers.
“That is the stated purpose of the SNAP program, the law states it and President Trump’s USDA plans to deliver on it,” she added.
Rollins approved the effort in May after Nebraska received the first federal waiver to ban soda and energy drinks from food stamps purchases.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has lauded the measure as a part of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
“U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, with foods that are going to give them diabetes. And then my agency ends up, through Medicaid and Medicare, paying for those injuries,” Kennedy said Monday.
“We’re going to put an end to that, and we’re doing it step by step, state by state,” he added.
Researchers have long argued that SNAP restrictions are unlikely to change eating patterns, and that it will be costly for the federal government to track 650,000 food and beverage products on the market and 20,000 new products introduced annually, according to economic policy researcher Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach’s 2017 testimony before the House Committee on Agriculture.
However, Trump administration officials have lauded the effort.
“I hope to see all 50 states join this bold commonsense approach. For too long, the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic have been addressed with lip service only,” said the U.S. Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary, according to NBC News.
