The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal nutrition program in the United States, with 40 million people receiving benefits each month.[1] Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP has proven to be an essential program for reducing poverty, improving health outcomes, and stimulating economic growth.[2] For example, SNAP is estimated to reduce health care costs by an estimated $1,409 per participant per year.[3] Children, elderly adults, and people with disabilities account for two-thirds of all people who participate in SNAP.[4]

Currently, a major reason for SNAP’s success is that it recognizes the dignity of its participants by allowing them to make their own choices about which foods to buy. Benefits may be used to purchase most food and drink products, except for hot and prepared foods and alcohol.[5] SNAP provides a seamless shopping experience by allowing families to use benefits through merchant-accepted Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards that serve as debit cards at grocery stores and other retailers across the country.[6]

This may change now that the Republican Party has gained control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. In recent years, there has been a push to further restrict SNAP food choice and instead limit SNAP purchases to “healthy” foods in response to the ongoing obesity crisis in the United States. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a vocal proponent of SNAP food choice restrictions, has argued that “taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent on junk food.”[7] Although “junk food” is a subjective and vague target, this would likely mean candy and soda; however, state legislators have recently introduced bills seeking to restrict deli meat, cheese, butter, white bread, and canned vegetables and beans.[8] It is unclear what foods would be designated as “healthy” and approved for purchase with SNAP. Proposals to restrict SNAP food choice may gain momentum in the next congressional session given its seamless fit into President-elect Donald Trump’s broader agenda to weaken federal assistance programs.[9]

Restricting SNAP food choice would be deeply misguided. First of all, proposals to restrict SNAP food choice are based on faulty, paternalistic, and racially biased assumptions that families who participate in SNAP eat more unhealthy foods than non-participant families of similar income levels. However, research consistently demonstrates this is not true—there are no major differences in grocery spending patterns between SNAP participants and nonparticipants.[10]Additionally, proposals to limit SNAP food choice are based on incomplete understandings of how SNAP works. SNAP is used to supplement grocery purchases. Families can—and often do—acquire certain foods, like produce, through other means like food banks or farm stands.

Not only are restrictions on SNAP food choice misguided, but they would also dramatically weaken program efficiency. Imposing new restrictions on foods purchased with SNAP would deny people the most basic level of dignity and increase stigma around participating in a program that helps people access food, a basic human need. Singling out people who receive SNAP, policing their shopping carts, and delaying their purchases at the register would inevitably decrease participation rates. Additionally, proposals to limit SNAP food choice fail to take into account the needs of individuals with certain health conditions or nutrition needs, and they also ignore cultural or religious food preferences.[11] Implementing these proposed restrictions would also disproportionately impact communities of color that have higher SNAP participation rates.[12] Overall, these proposals will not help families participating in SNAP; they will instead cause serious harm to the people these restrictions claim to help.

In addition to weakening SNAP and harming families with low incomes, SNAP restrictions will increase costs for taxpayers, businesses, and consumers. Imposing new restrictions on SNAP would require expensive new infrastructure for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), grocery stores, and other retailers. Taxpayers would foot the bill to expand USDA’s capacity to patrol grocery transactions. Under some proposals, USDA would have to categorize more than 650,000 existing food and beverage products already in grocery stores, as well as 20,000 new products each year.[13] USDA estimates that implementing a system to capture the necessary point-of-sale data would initially cost more than $400 million and an additional $600 million per year.[14] Businesses would also be negatively impacted. Grocery stores would be forced to update or purchase new point-of-sale systems, which could strain small independent grocers that have fewer resources to devote to software and personnel. For these reasons, more than 2,500 grocers have come together to oppose any new legislative restrictions on SNAP food choice.[15] Furthermore, any increased costs would be passed on to consumers through higher prices.

Instead of restricting SNAP food choice, other solutions are available to help combat hunger and improve nutrition. One idea is to expand food choices rather than limit them. For example, Congress should authorize the use of SNAP benefits for hot and prepared foods like rotisserie chicken and hot soup. In addition, there should be a meaningful effort to pursue broad-based solutions. Regardless of how policymakers choose to combat the hunger and obesity crises, restricting SNAP food choice is insufficient and will do far more harm than good.

[1] Salaam Bhatti, 6 Things You Should Know About SNAP, Food Rsch. & Action Center (Aug. 29, 2024), https://frac.org/blog/snap60thanniversary#:~:text=SNAP%20is%20the%20first%20line,the%20program%20we%20know%20today.

[2] SNAP Benefits Need To Be Made Adequate, Not Cut Or Restricted, Food Research & Action Center 1 (Feb. 2018), https://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/snap-food-choice.pdf.

[3] Seth A. Berkowitz et al., Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Participation and Health Care Expenditures Among Low-Income Adults, 177 JAMA Int. Med. 1642, 1642 (2017), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28973507/.

[4] Joseph Llobrera & Lauren Hall, SNAP Provides Critical Benefits to Workers and Their Families, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities(Aug. 10, 2023), https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-provides-critical-benefits-to-workers-and-their-families#:~:text=The%20Supplemental%20Nutrition%20Assistance%20Program,them%20during%20periods%20of%20unemployment.

[5] What Can SNAP Buy?, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Nov. 17, 2023), https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items.

[6] Bhatti, supra note 1.

[7] Press Release, Sen. Cory Booker, Rubio, Booker Introduce Snap Nutrition Security Act (July 14, 2023), https://www.booker.senate.gov/news/press/booker-rubio-introduce-bipartisan-snap-legislation-to-measure-and-improve-nutrition-security-and-diet-quality.

[8] Grace Eliza Goodwin, Iowa Republicans want to ban SNAP recipients from buying meat, white bread, and American cheese, Business Insider (Jan. 20, 2023), https://www.businessinsider.com/iowa-republicans-bill-ban-snap-recipients-meat-sliced-cheese-2023-1.

[9] Jennifer Ludden, The country’s social safety net could be in danger as Trump looks to slash spending, Nat’l Pub. Radio (Nov. 25, 2024), https://www.npr.org/2024/11/25/nx-s1-5184462/the-countrys-social-safety-net-could-be-in-danger-as-trump-looks-to-slash-spending.

[10] Steven Garasky et al., Feasibility Study of Capturing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Purchases at the Point of Sale—Final Report, U.S. Department of Agriculture 4 (Nov. 2016), https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/CapturingSNAPPurchases.pdf.

[11] SNAP Benefits Need To Be Made Adequate, supra note 2, at 6.

[12] Letter from Am. Bakers Ass’n et al. to Thomas J. Vilsack, Sec’y of Agric. (July 30, 2024), https://civilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SNAP-choice-USDA-letter_.pdf.

[13] Pros and Cons of Restricting SNAP Purchases: Hearing Before the House Committee on Agriculture, 115th Cong. 14 (2017) (statement of Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Dir. and Senior Fellow, Econ. Stud., The Hamilton Project, Brookings Inst.; Prof. of Soc. Pol’y and of Econ., Northwestern Univ.), https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/115-02_-_24325.pdf.

[14] Garasky, supra note 10, at 7.

[15] Protect SNAP Choice, National Grocers Association 1, https://www.nationalgrocers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-04-NGA_Issue-Brief_SNAP-CHOICE-1-1.pdf.