This week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins continued to make history, signing federal waivers banning certain junk foods from food stamps for six more states—Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia. This builds upon her work signing the first-ever junk food ban waiver for Nebraska in May.
Twelve total states have now seen their waivers signed and approved by the Trump administration, showing an undeniable wave of state momentum behind the efforts to focus on nutrition in the food stamp program, matching the nation’s desire to be healthier.
These monumental victories for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement will refocus the food stamp program on its mission of providing needy families with better nutrition assistance by eliminating the worst offenders on the food stamp junk food list. And the Trump administration is harnessing the massive public support for the MAHA agenda to secure once-in-a-generation federal reforms and allow states to tackle the public health crisis head-on.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan, better known as food stamps, is a government program created by Congress expressly to “raise levels of nutrition among low-income households.” But since that well-intentioned beginning six decades ago, the federal government has often lost sight of this mission. The most glaring example is allowing the use of food stamps funds to buy soda and other junk foods, which have almost no nutritional value whatsoever.
Over those same six decades, America has seen a growing health crisis. America is overfed and undernourished, with an unprecedented obesity problem that is more pronounced among lower-income Americans. The average American weighs 30 pounds more today than the average American weighed in 1990.
One in five children over age six is obese. Adults on food stamps are more likely to be obese and have worse diets overall than the general public, even compared to people with similar income levels who aren’t on the program. The average American child consumes double the recommended daily intake of sugar, thanks in no small part to soda.
This public health crisis is putting pressure not just on food stamps but on a whole host of government programs, especially Medicaid. Most Medicaid funds are spent on individuals with chronic illnesses, many of which are caused by poor diet. Taxpayers are on the hook for subsidizing the causes of this public health crisis, as well as the medical expenses that stem from it. Secretary Rollins’s historic food stamps waivers will not only save taxpayer funds and improve public health, but they will also strengthen other critical government programs for the truly needy. This is a win-win-win.
Contrary to spin in the liberal media, no one is “banning” soda or preventing Americans from purchasing the foods they want to eat. People are still free to buy soda if they want to—just not with food stamps. With these waivers, taxpayer dollars will no longer subsidize junk food. The waivers’ impact could be huge. Food stamps is the largest government food program, serving 42 million Americans and costing more than $110 billion annually, and soda is the number one commodity purchased with food stamps.
Governors and legislators in states receiving waivers deserve a great deal of credit for taking action to initiate this process and make their states healthier. Thirteen states in total have submitted waivers, and more are likely to follow suit. The MAHA momentum is building.
States have an obligation to taxpayers and the people the program is meant to serve to work with the federal government to improve their food stamp programs and ensure tax dollars are going to nutritious options. The waivers and a willing partner in Secretary Rollins present a rare combination that should not be taken for granted.
With this growing momentum, there is no excuse for any governor or legislator to stand in the way. It is time to make the food stamp program finally return to its mission of improving nutrition for lower-income Americans: It is time to make food stamps healthy again.
Paige Terryberry is a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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