Last week during a tour through Nebraska, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins signed into effect a waiver request that targets soda pop and energy drinks under the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps program. The waiver is the first of its kind to remove the drinks from approved items that recipients in the program can purchase.
Initially, the waiver request was submitted in early April and went through the channels at USDA to ensure language met standards set in the most recent farm bill which was updated and passed in December 2024. Today, there are over a half-dozen states who have submitted the same request. Now that precedence has been set, state after state will most likely follow suit. The lobbying arms of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are sure to be working in high gear to combat this effort.
Speaking to the media, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said, “The last time I checked, pop is not a food group.” He went on to say, “There’s absolutely zero reason for taxpayers to be subsidizing purchases of soda and energy drinks,” adding that seven out of 10 Nebraskans are obese. Steve Corsi, the director of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, claimed pop was the largest category of items purchased at just over 9%. According to an article published in the Nebraska Examiner, roughly 7.5% of the state’s population, which is about 150,000 people, participate in the state’s program. The article said the average person in the program receives about $5.82 per day. This also means they spend roughly $15.72 per month ($188.57 per year) on pop and energy drinks provided under the program.
This is a move that follows recent remarks and campaign promises by President Donald Trump and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that they plan to “Make American Healthy Again.” This move by Nebraska really emphasizes the “make” in that statement.
Energy drinks that are available in every convenience store contain a list of ingredients that are rather scary. For example, from Monster Energy, they produce a can called the “Mega Monster,” which comes in a 24-ounce can and contains 41 grams of sugar, or about 15 sugar cubes for reference. This same can contains 240 milligrams of caffeine. Both are extremely unhealthy and addicting, but until now, were available to everyone under SNAP.
Nationally, SNAP has served an average of 42.1 million people, or roughly 12.6% of the nation’s population. The average person in the program has received $211.65 per person each month. Under current guidelines, a family of four can receive nearly $1,000/month in monetary benefits.
The 2018 Farm Bill was projected to cost more than $428 billion over a five-year span ending in 2023, but was extended and is now set to expire on Sept. 30 of this year. Talks and negotiations are already underway. The biggest headline so far is that the House Agriculture Committee just approved $300 billion in budget cuts to food assistance programs under the upcoming farm bill. This new measure was sent to the House Budget Committee for further discussion before a full House floor vote. This number will most likely change in a drastic way, but the message has been sent regardless.
According to the American Public Human Services Association, roughly 80% of the farm bill’s allocation goes directly to food assistance programs, which is about $342 billion. Nationally, 9.3% of SNAP expenditures are used on sugar-sweetened beverages, which then becomes between 20-25% of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s annual budgets. That’s almost $10 billion to each company through taxpayer programs to these individual companies! Ironically, this is roughly three times what the consumer spends on milk.
Sadly, in 2020, approximately 17.2 million people received assistance, but that number has nearly tripled in the last quarter century. The trend is going in the wrong direction.
This move by Nebraska will be followed by a floodgate of states with similar measures. Personally, I can’t wait to look back in a few years and see if Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s budgets are truly impacted or if they were just operating the easy way to get taxpayer money by using federal programs and then advertising their products directly to that audience. All the data I could find suggested a huge need to critically look at spending in these programs. Highly processed foods, soda and energy drinks are under fire, but this is a commonsense move. — LOGAN IPSEN
