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?