Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is an economist who has spent her entire career studying policies meant to alleviate hunger and improve the health and nutrition of poor Americans. In the run-up to the 2018 Farm Bill, she was asked to testify in front of the House Agriculture Committee at a hearing on the pros and cons of restricting the purchase of soda and other unhealthy foods within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Based on the body of research she reviewed, which included her own studies, she summed up her thinking at the start. “I believe that SNAP restrictions will be difficult to structure in practice, will be inefficiently targeted, and in many cases—such as a proposed ban of the purchase of soft drinks or sweetened beverages—will be unlikely to change consumption patterns,” she told lawmakers. “There are better policy options for promoting healthy eating patterns, both for SNAP recipients and for all Americans.”
At the time, Schanzenbach said, her aunt was especially proud of her appearance in front of Congress. After, she sent Schanzenbach a note.
“She was like, ‘You were great, darling! But I think you’re completely wrong.’”
Schanzenbach wasn’t surprised. While it is often presented as a common-sense issue, the question of whether to restrict what people can buy with SNAP has inspired decades of circuitous, heated debate and political maneuvering. Some argue that the program should remain a simple source of grocery dollars for Americans struggling to feed their families, while others say food and beverages associated with chronic disease risk should be eliminated from acceptable SNAP purchases.
Want to get a sense of the complications? Into a whirring blender, throw nutrition experts trying to parse limited, inconsistent data on what SNAP participants actually buy and their health outcomes. Mix in some pseudo-experts peddling misinformation and bad data. Add politicians trying to score points. Don’t forget hunger groups that often see any restriction to SNAP benefits as an existential threat to the program or the powerful soda and junk food lobbyists fighting to protect corporate profits.
All of these groups have been crashing into each other for years. Now, in the era of Make America Healthy Again, Republicans are turning the dial up to 10.
In Congress, where getting SNAP restrictions into a farm bill used to be seen as a political impossibility, that thinking is changing; now the idea comes up in hearing after hearing. That means there’s a good chance some language that implements national restrictions or introduces a pilot program could be included, should a farm bill move through Congress later this year.
At the same time, Republican legislators in more than a dozen states have introduced bills to restrict soda and unhealthy foods within SNAP. If those bills succeed, states still need a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put the restrictions into place, and historically the USDA has rejected waiver requests under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
But Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is taking a different tack: Within her first week in office, she sent a letter to state governments outlining her guiding principles on the nation’s hunger programs. Second on her list was a commitment to “support state innovation through approvals of waivers.” She also told White House reporters she’s looking forward to working with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to figure out potential restrictions. So, state restrictions could become a reality soon.
All of this is happening at a time when Republicans have proposed rolling back Biden-era updates to SNAP that could result in up to $230 billion cuts to benefits, shrinking how much individuals have to spend at the store while food prices continue to rise. That approach doesn’t sync up with the evidence on how best to improve nutrition, said Schanzenbach, who is now at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research. “In general, when people have more money to spend on food, they buy more food, and healthier food.”
One thing that everyone can agree on is that Americans are not eating well, and that contributes to high rates of chronic disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), about 42 percent of American adults and 20 percent of children have obesity. More than a third of deaths each year are due to heart attack or stroke.
Costly Logistics?
Billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently called Kennedy “beyond dangerous,” based on his views on vaccines and spreading of conspiracy theories. But on soda in SNAP, the two have agreed.
Bloomberg—known for his public health initiatives including banning smoking in city parks and getting calorie counts on fast food menus—was central to the most high-profile effort to get soda out of SNAP. Fifteen years ago, New York City applied for a waiver to ban beverages with more than 10 calories per eight ounces (excluding fruit juice and milk) from allowed purchases.
Prominent New York University nutrition professor and author Marion Nestle (who is sits on Civil Eats’ advisory board) had opposed the idea of restrictions in the past, but she got behind the effort as she watched both sugary drink consumption and chronic disease rates rise and saw the role the soda industry played.
In the end, USDA officials rejected the waiver request based on what they said was the logistical difficulty of implementing the plan and how difficult it would be to track whether it reduced obesity.
