Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. announced this week that he is taking steps to ban the use of food stamps for junk food like soda and candy.
Secretary Kennedy said that taxpayer-funded SNAP is funding more than $40 million per day on sugary drinks.
Full remarks by Secretary Kennedy:
We’re spending $405 million a day on SNAP. About 10% is going to sugary drinks, and if you add candies to that, it’s about 13 to 17%, and 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. US taxpayers should not pay for it. The U.S. taxpayer should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, the foods are going to give them diabetes. And then my agency ends up, through Medicaid or Medicare, paying for those injuries.
We’re going to put an end to that, and we’re doing that step by step, state by state. I’m also working with Secretary Rollins on the dietary guidelines, which should come out next month– three months ahead of schedule. And the dietary guidelines that we inherited from the Biden Administration were 453 pages long. They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put Fruit Loops at the top of the food pyramid. And they were incomprehensible. We are going to release dietary guidelines that are four, five, or six pages long, that are understandable, that are simple, and will allow people to make good choices about their food. They will drive changes in the school lunch programs, and prison lunches, and military food, and they will begin to change America almost immediately.
We’re also working on the release of the MAHA report. Brooke, especially, has been adamant about the issue that we need to keep farmers as partners in the MAHA movement if we’re going to have nutrient-dense food. And that is what we care about. We’ve had over 130 meetings with farmers to understand their concerns, to learn from them, and to understand how we can help them transition toward more and more nutrient-dense food. I also want to thank President Trump for the Big Beautiful Bill. If we’re going to save the American farmers, we need to save rural America. Right now, Medicaid gives about 7% of its funds to rural hospitals, 7%. This is about $20 billion a year. We are now going to add, through the rural transformation bill, we’re going to add another $50 billion over five years…”
WATCH:
BREAKING: Secretary RFK Jr. is now taking action to fully ban FOOD STAMPS from being used for obtaining SODA.
“If you want to buy a sugary soda – the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it. The U.S. taxpayer should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in the… pic.twitter.com/JElCFvxS3m
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 4, 2025
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