The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on March 4 approved new restrictions for food stamps in Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, and Wyoming.
“Real food is the foundation of healthier families and healthier communities,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement.
Rollins signed waiver requests from the four states during an event at the USDA headquarters in Washington.
The USDA runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal food stamp program, with assistance from states.
Ohio was approved to bar people participating in SNAP from buying carbonated drinks that list sweeteners such as sugar or corn syrup as the primary ingredient.
Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Matt Damschroder said in a statement the development “is a meaningful step toward better health outcomes for Ohioans on food assistance.”
Wyoming received clearance to ban sweetened carbonated beverages and candy.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican who approved submitting the waiver, said in a recent statement that officials “targeted products with no nutritional value while preserving dignity and personal responsibility, something Wyoming citizens feel strongly about.”
Details of the requests from Kansas and Nevada were not available.
Officials have not yet said when the new restrictions will go into effect.
About 42 million people received SNAP in an average month in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2025. The government spends $8 billion to $9 billion a month on the program.
Rollins and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have for months been encouraging states to bar certain items from SNAP as part of the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The first set of restrictions went into effect on Jan. 1, in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia. Restrictions have since been imposed in Idaho, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
Many states have been disallowing soda and other sugary drinks. A small number have been targeting energy drinks and candy.
People have historically been able to use SNAP funds on a wide range of foods and drinks, as well as seeds and plants. Longstanding restrictions include prohibitions on buying alcohol, cigarettes, and vitamins.
Some officials, lawmakers, and advocacy groups have said they oppose more restrictions on food stamps.
Such restrictions will “increase government regulation while treating working-class families and veterans like second-class citizens not capable of making their own grocery decisions,” the American Beverage Association said in a report last year.
Calley Means, an adviser to Kennedy, told the event on Wednesday that “if government is going to be spending $120 billion on SNAP, we owe it to those Americans to make sure that money is going to incentivize real food and not junk food.”
Kennedy said he hopes that by the end of 2026, all states will have asked for and been approved to enact more SNAP limits.
