No one should be able to buy poison with food stamps. Our tax dollars should not subsidize soda and junk food. Approximately 41 million Americans currently receive SNAP benefits. (For those who don't know, the government rebranded food stamps as SNAP in 2008 to help destigmatize the program.) SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It dates back to 1939 when FDR started food stamps to help those in need after the Stock Market crash and the Great Depression. Initially, the program was installed to help people buy only the essentials.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should eliminate the use of SNAP benefits to purchase items like candy, soda, and processed food. These foods are the antithesis of nutrition and lead to disease. People can buy these with their own money, but the American people should not fund them. These are luxuries, not essentials.
In his Senate confirmation hearing, RFK Jr. stated that 10% of SNAP funds go towards soda. I've seen estimates ranging between $4 and $13 billion worth of SNAP benefits pay for sugar-filled drinks and snacks.
I agree with having a limited social support system for people in need, but SNAP shouldn't be used as if it's trick-or-treating. It should be a safety net to help those living in poverty afford the basics for their families. If systems like SNAP are kept in place, we must ensure our money promotes nutrition—as the acronym implies.
There are too many children in America that rely on SNAP benefits. According to the US Census Bureau, approximately 9.96 million children in America live in poverty. As of 2024, over 16 million children are enrolled in SNAP. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 14.7 million kids between the ages of 2-19 are obese. The increase in childhood obesity has been in effect since the 1990s. If SNAP is accelerating this at all, then it must stop immediately. There is no reason for our taxes to fund the destruction of our youth.
The poor health of our children will lead to poor health in the future of this country. Only the people who want to destroy America would like to continue handing out junk food to children instead of promoting actual nutrition.
The USDA released a report in 2021 that said nearly 9 in 10 SNAP beneficiaries struggle to maintain a healthy diet. SNAP's priority should be to revive and sustain the health of people in need and, by doing so, encourage a lifestyle that isn't married to government handouts.
RFK Jr.'s broader point is that allowing SNAP to purchase unhealthy items burdens government healthcare systems. 72% of SNAP recipients received Medicaid. If the taxpayer is paying for SNAP-assisted unhealthy diets, the taxpayer will also be paying for the medical treatments associated with those diets.
There is an unholy alliance in DC between Big Pharma and Big Sugar. If you weren't aware, the Sugar Association has a headquarters in the Nation's capital. They proselytize the benefits of sugar. Its mission is "to promote the consumption of sugar as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle through sound science and research." The Sugar Association says that sugar is essential. It's like trusting a drug dealer to tell you their product is safe. These are the types of lobbyists overseeing the anti-MAHA agenda today.
In the 1960s, the Sugar Association paid for studies that "proved" sugar didn't negatively impact the heart. The association paid Harvard scientists to help push this narrative. In their "expert" opinion, fats were to blame more than sugar. Their findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
These corporate interests have attacked the American people for too long, and RFK Jr. is, at the very least, trying to ensure that the taxpayer no longer contributes to them.
These shady dealings might remind you of the recent "SodaGate" controversy, where X influencers were paid to push pro-Soda propaganda to counter RFK Jr.'s comments about cutting SNAP benefits, many of whom did so without noting that it was a paid promotion.
It's easy to imagine that pro-sugar companies would be upset with such cuts to SNAP. Unfortunately, companies like PepsiCo appear to earn $5 billion a year from SNAP.
Many critics of RFK Jr.'s approach to SNAP say that it will prevent "the dignity of choice" among SNAP recipients. If you've signed up for government help, you sacrifice the dignity of choice. This system isn't in place to promote gluttony. It's there to help people keep the essentials on the table.
Countless other critics of RFK Jr.'s stance smear this attempt by comparing it to former Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban. He wanted to make purchasing soda in cups more significant than 16oz illegal. This is nothing like RFK Jr.'s proposal, as this law would've limited the ability of citizens to use their own money to purchase what they wanted.
Furthermore, critics say these new SNAP preventions will hurt people who live in "food deserts." But now that Instacart is available in most counties and accepts SNAP, people can have these healthier items delivered to their homes.
Even though I encourage RFK Jr. to make these changes to SNAP to help promote healthier diets while also saving tax dollars, the fundamental change to America's health will come from the bottom up, not the top down. We could use the return of hyper-local accountability. Churches and food banks could provide more lasting help for their neighbors than the government.
We should be worried about the well-being of our national health in a way that goes beyond the surface-level help the government offers while also creating a safety net for people in need.
As far back as the year food stamps were created in 1939, there was a genuine concern for our people's and children's health. In the documentary The City, the narrator says, "Modern cities are unhealthy."
It continues:
"There are prisons where a guy sent up for crime can get a better place to live than we can give our children. Smoke makes prosperity, they tell you here. Smoke makes prosperity no matter if you choke on it… There's poison in the air we breathe. There's poison in the river. The fog and smoke below rise and choke us."
These sentiments sound a lot like MAHA today. They are not so much climate activist alarmism as concerns about how progress can affect Americans' health.
Now that MAHA has helped usher in reevaluating our public health, I hope we can take the following steps to implement the changes that will prevent tax dollars from accelerating obesity and disease.
