Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that he is taking action to prevent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) users from purchasing items such as sugary drinks.
Kennedy pointed out that while people can make their own decisions regarding what to buy and what not to buy, taxpayers in the United States “should not pay” for people on SNAP to purchase items like sugary sodas.
The comments from Kennedy were made as he and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary joined Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in celebrating the signing of six new SNAP state waivers, which would “amend the statutory definition of food for purchase and end the subsidization of popular types of junk food beginning in 2026,” according to an HHS press release. States signing the new SNAP waivers include West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Other states, such as Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah, have previously signed SNAP waivers.
“We are spending $405 million a day on SNAP, about ten percent is going to sugary drinks … if you add candies to that, it’s about 13 to 17 percent,” Kennedy said on Monday. “We all believe in free choice, we live in a democracy, people can make their own choice about what they’re going to buy and what they’re not going to buy.”
“If you want to buy a sugary soda — you ought to be able to do that — the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it,” Kennedy added. “The U.S. taxpayer should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, the foods that are going to give them diabetes. And then my agency ends up — through Medicaid and Medicare — paying for those injuries. We’re going to put an end to that, and we’re doing it step by step, state by state.”
Kennedy added that he was working with Rollins on dietary guidelines, noting that the dietary guidelines they “inherited from the Biden administration were 453 pages long.”
“They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid, and they were incomprehensible,” Kennedy continued. “We are going to release dietary guidelines that are four or five or six pages long, that are understandable, that are simple, and will allow people to make good choices about their food.”
Breitbart News reported that during Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, he spoke about reversing “the chronic disease epidemic” in the nation. Kennedy “provided some examples of how” the U.S. “could implement the MAHA agenda”:
He provided some examples of how the United States could implement the MAHA agenda, using federal funding of the SNAP program — and school lunch programs — as examples.
“We should be giving 60 percent of the kids in school processed food that is making them sick. … We shouldn’t be spending 10 percent of the SNAP program on sugar drinks. We so we have a direct ability to change things,” he said, adding that “we need to focus more on outcome-based medicine, on putting people in charge of their own health care, of making them accountable for their own health care so they understand the relationship between eating and getting sick” with Medicaid and Medicare as well.
Kennedy has also clarified that he would not “take food away from anybody,” adding that if people want their McDonald’s or Hostess Twinkies, they “should be able to get them,” but that they should also be aware of what the impacts of those food items are on their health.
