Indiana is one of six Republican-led states to whom USDA officials granted SNAP waivers for sugary foods under the waiver authority of the Food Nutrition Act.
W hen Indiana Governor Mike Braun was preparing to roll out his executive orders seeking U.S. Department of Agriculture waivers for soda and candy for Indiana nutrition-assistance recipients back in April, he knew it was only a matter of time before the affected food companies would demand loopholes and exceptions from the waiver.
Like clockwork, the sugary snack lobby made their case to keep their products nutrition-assistance approved. “They were in here trying to schmooze me” when they came to town in mid-May for a confectioner lobby get-together in Indianapolis, the governor said in a recent wide-ranging interview with National Review. “And I held firm.”
Along with Iowa, Idaho, Utah, Arkansas, and Nebraska, Indiana is one of six Republican-led states to whom USDA officials granted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) waivers for sugary foods under the waiver authority of the Food Nutrition Act. The states whose waivers are currently under review include Kansas, West Virginia, Colorado, and Florida, and prospective states include Louisiana, Texas, and Ohio. Most of the new rules won’t kick in until 2026 at the earliest.
The trend is not new, nor is the country’s obesity epidemic or soda lobby. For decades, politicians in both parties have intermittently sought USDA waivers for sugary foods and drinks in SNAP to curb their own states’ obesity and chronic disease rates — only for the federal government to reject those requests.
In 2004, for example, the Bush administration’s USDA rejected then-Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota’s 2004 waiver request for soda and candy in SNAP benefits on the grounds that that nixing sugary snacks would “add confusion and embarrassment at the point of sale” and “perpetuate the myth” that food stamp recipients “do not make wise food purchasing decisions.” And in 2011, the Obama administration’s USDA rejected former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s city-wide initiative to restrict soda from SNAP purchases on the grounds that “the scale and scope of the proposed demonstration is too large and complex.”
But during the second Trump administration, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is fast-tracking the waivers in a nod to the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement — the health initiative spearheaded by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Following her confirmation earlier this year, Rollins sent a letter to state agencies who operate the department’s nutrition departments to explore waiver authority on the state level. Rollins and other administration officials believe that experimenting with the waivers will allow states to serve as laboratories of democracy on the chronic disease front.
“If you want to drink a bottle of soda, you should be able to have that right. We live in a country where we have individual freedom,” Kennedy, the former 2024 presidential candidate turned Trump ally, said at a recent event in Oklahoma with the state’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt. “The federal government should not be paying for it through taxpayer money.”
SNAP waivers for sugary drinks and snacks are one of many MAHA victories Kennedy’s movement is driving at the state level. In recent months, Republican governors across the country have signed legislation regulating artificial food dyes, seed oils, and fluoride in the water as well as promoting more fitness education in K–12 schools.
‘When you’re doing things that are self-destructive, you’ve got to own it.’
During the Obama administration, Republicans decried first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative to promote exercise and healthier eating in K–12 schools, citing financial, personal liberty, and federalism concerns. A few administrations later, Republicans are now embracing USDA waivers on a state-by-state basis, arguing that taxpayer money shouldn’t be subsidizing unhealthy foods that will worsen the obesity epidemic and strain the health system.
For Republicans who are pushing their states to adopt healthier SNAP requirements, Michelle Obama’s push was many moons ago. This is especially true for someone like Braun, a former U.S. Senator who worked on the issue with an unlikely ally on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee: Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).
“I think that in this case, probably everybody since then has seen their health insurance premiums go up where they work,” Braun said when pressed on the former first lady’s school-lunch efforts.
Beyond the typical concerns with the MAHA movement’s vaccine and pharmaceutical skepticism, Kennedy critics argue that regulating SNAP waivers encroaches on consumer choice and stigmatizes SNAP beneficiaries’ food preferences.
But Braun thinks that nudging his constituents to eat healthier is worth the consumer choice tradeoff — especially when taxpayer money is involved. Failing to at least try to curb the obesity epidemic will have dire economic impacts on future generations, he said.
“I think there’s a point where you’ve got to come to some type of mental understanding of: Even if you’re for one thing, does it make sense that you then just blindly follow it? Because I believe in freedom, personal liberty, more than anyone possibly could,” Braun explained. “I also believe that when you’re doing things that are self-destructive, you’ve got to own it. And if you don’t want to own it yourself, and you’re asking for government to pay for it. I think that’s the intersection we’ve come to.”
And after all, SNAP money is fungible, meaning it’s just one part of a family’s food budget. “If somebody indeed wants to purchase something that in a particular state is disallowed using SNAP, they’re going to find a way to purchase it,” a USDA official said in a recent interview with NR.
This official said that one of the main Agriculture Department concerns is interoperability for SNAP recipients: ensuring that beneficiaries who live on state lines are aware of the policies when they travel or buy food in different states when the rules are changing.
Another challenge governors are facing is how to define what counts as a sugary snack. At the turn of the 21st century, a group of states joined together to develop more efficient sales tax definitions for member states. Now, Indiana is one of two dozen states with that streamlined their tax code.
Like other states that abide by the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, the Indiana code defines “candy” as “a preparation of sugar, honey, or other natural or artificial sweeteners in combination with chocolate, fruits, nuts, or other ingredients or flavorings in the form of bars, drops, or pieces.” But the state code excludes any products “containing flour” or “requiring refrigeration” — meaning ultra-sugary candy products like KitKats or Cookies ‘n Cream Hershey’s bars could get exceptions under Indiana law.
To develop a more intuitive definition for the purposes of the waiver, the state made changes to the streamline sales tax definitions — specifically to avoid loopholes for candies like Twix or SNAP prohibition of diluted fruit juices that contain less than 50 percent juice, which would otherwise fall under the state code’s soft drink definition. Indiana made these changes “between initial request submission and approval, during our technical assistance period with USDA and our feedback from retailers and Indiana-based advocacy groups who work with SNAP enrollees,” according to a source familiar with the matter.