It’s about time someone in Washington had the guts to say what every common-sense American already knows: taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for junk food.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing to end the use of food stamps—known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—to buy sugary drinks and processed junk. And frankly, it’s long overdue.
“We are spending $405 million a day on SNAP,” Kennedy said. “About ten percent is going to sugary drinks. If you add candies to that, it’s about 13 to 17 percent.” That’s not a fringe statistic—it’s a national disgrace. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every single day are being flushed down the drain, helping fund the obesity crisis, not feed the hungry.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t about controlling people’s personal choices. If someone wants to spend their own money on a two-liter bottle of soda and a bag of Skittles, that’s their right. But when those purchases are being made on the public dime, the taxpayer has every right to ask: Are we subsidizing nourishment, or are we subsidizing sickness?
Kennedy is drawing a hard line, and he’s not wrong. Our national nutrition policy has been a tangled mess, manipulated by powerful food lobbies and big corporate interests for decades. Remember the so-called “food pyramid?” It told kids that sugary cereals like Froot Loops were healthy breakfast options. That nonsense didn’t come from nutritionists—it came from marketing departments.
Kennedy nailed it when he said the dietary guidelines left over from the Biden administration were “453 pages long,” incomprehensible, and “driven by the same commercial impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid.” In other words, it wasn’t about health—it was about profit.
Now, under the leadership of Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, six states—West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas—have signed SNAP waivers that will begin correcting this insanity starting in 2026. They join other common-sense states like Arkansas, Indiana, Utah, and Idaho that have already taken action.
That’s federalism at work. States leading the charge, Washington backing them up, and a clear message being sent: If we’re going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on welfare programs, we better make sure that money is doing what it’s supposed to do—promoting health, not decay.
This is also a cultural issue. For far too long, the left has used welfare programs not as a safety net, but as a vote-buying scheme. Hand out benefits with no accountability, no oversight, and no concern for long-term consequences. But that’s not compassion. That’s enabling dependency.
Kennedy is flipping that script. He’s not banning people from buying soda or fast food. He’s simply saying: If you want it, buy it with your own money. If you’re receiving public assistance, let’s make sure it’s helping you get back on your feet—not sending you to the emergency room.
Beyond just SNAP, Kennedy is looking at the bigger picture. He’s calling out the school lunch programs that serve processed garbage to 60 percent of American children. He’s pushing for “outcome-based medicine” and calling for Americans to take more personal responsibility for their health. In his words: “We need to focus more on outcome-based medicine, on putting people in charge of their own health care, of making them accountable for their own health care so they understand the relationship between eating and getting sick.”
This is the kind of leadership we need. Not more bureaucratic bloat, not more money thrown at broken systems, but real reform that respects the taxpayer and restores accountability.
Kennedy may not be everyone’s first pick for HHS Secretary, but on this issue, he’s got it right. It’s time to stop pretending that spending billions on junk food is somehow compassionate. It’s not. It’s destructive.
America doesn’t need more sugar subsidies. We need strength, discipline, and a government that values health over handouts. And for once, it looks like we’re getting exactly that.
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Author: rachel
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