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Iowa’s SNAP pop ban tastes like paternal punishment

Jun. 1, 2025 5:00 am
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Well, the pop police are on their way. Or the soda sheriff, if that’s your inclination.
They’ll be looking for low-income Iowans who try to use federal food assistance to buy, for example, lemonade, that cool, refreshing but sugary drink. In the future, when life hands them lemons, they had better be squeezing them over fresh broccoli.
Gov. Kim Reynolds got a waiver from the Trump administration to ban Iowans from using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, benefits to buy sugary sodas, fruit punches, candy, gum and candy-coated items. Also, caramel corn.
It’s like the queen of France said. “Let them not eat cake.”
The media got it all wrong. Typical.
Take pop to the checkout aisle after Jan. 1 and SNAP shoppers will be told they can’t buy it with their EBT card. Basically, most grocery store items subject to sales taxes are on the naughty list.
Did we forget this is King Corn’s capital? A significant portion of his bounty is used to make corn syrup oozing into the food system. It runs through our veins, as do the chemicals used to grow corn.
Pop is public enemy No. 1. Our dirty water doesn’t even make the list.
With food pantries being pushed to the limit trying to provide enough food for needy people, this seems like an odd time to mess around with SNAP. Feeding America says one in six Iowa kids faces hunger. This will not solve that problem.
We should be making it easier to get food instead of cooking up new restrictions hungry families must navigate to get help. I’m not advocating a soda and candy diet, but why make these folks’ lives more complicated? It feels more like paternal punishment than public policy. Republicans used to abhor a nanny state.
And when are parents supposed to cook these healthy meals if they’re working multiple jobs and crappy shifts? As the dinner-maker at my house, I know it’s the last thing you want to do after a hard day.
But it must be done, Reynolds argues, to make sure poor people don’t veer off the road to nutrition, as so many of us have. It’s all to help obese children, you see.
If only our leaders’ motives were pure and thoughtful. They are not.
Conservatives decided a while back people who need state help are not just in a lousy situation. They got into this mess due to “bad choices.” Or they’re scamming the system.
So, safety net programs must have a punishment component that drives home the shame of accepting government bucks. Our governor once told us low-income Iowans are using safety net programs as “a hammock.” Being poor is a day at the beach.
“Bad choices” is among the reasons cited by opponents of raising the minimum wage.
Shame! Shame! Shame!
“The state of Iowa doesn’t trust low-income families to make food choices,” said Luke Elzinga, who chairs the board of the Iowa Hunger coalition, about the SNAP pop ban.
Yeah, that about covers it.
Our governor became terribly interested in childhood obesity at about the time she needed a reason for turning down millions of dollars in federal summer food help for kids from the Biden administration. She cooked up her own plan, which also adds complications.
Republicans have sliced unemployment benefits. They slapped an assets test on SNAP eligibility. They added a work requirement to Medicaid.
As a result, thousands of Iowans could lose food aid and medical insurance if they fail to navigate new rules and red tape spawned by our mistrust. Without adequate food and health coverage, how long can they stay healthy enough to work?
And if it stopped at pop and candy, that would be one thing. But Republicans are targeting low-income Iowans from multiple directions.
Trump Republicans in D.C. must cut hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade from the cost of Medicaid and SNAP. Work requirements for Medicaid, while Trump favors forcing states to pay more for SNAP or cut eligibility.
Based on what we’ve seen, what will Iowa do? It’s an easy guess.
These cuts and others must happen so Trump can afford trillions of dollars in federal tax cuts. And our Republican members of the House from Iowa all voted in favor of his plan.
Back home, the Legislature also created a Medicaid work requirement that will knock eligible people out of the program. And it will be reporting requirements that will deliver the blows. Most Medicaid recipients already work.
Iowa also has big tax cuts sapping revenue. I sense a pattern.
Again, I’m not saying pop and candy are nutritious. But if we ban bad stuff, we should also increase benefits so families have more money to buy good stuff, which can be pricey.
It might also help to bring in people who understand the facts on the ground in Iowa. Instead, some of these bills come from Conservative think tanks in other states.
“In order to move beyond the stalemate of the current debate, advocates and researchers who care about the health and well-being of low-income Americans must listen to all perspectives and work together to identify a range of acceptable strategies that consider not only the health but the dignity of the people they are committed to serving,” wrote Marlene B. Schwartz, a researcher at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut
Lawmakers were asked to provide $1 million for “Double Up Food Bucks,” which allows SNAP recipients who buy fresh produce to have the cost of fruit and vegetables. added to their food assistance account to buy more produce. It’s an incentive, not a punishment.
GOP lawmakers didn’t see it as a priority. It was apparently unaffordable in a state where we’re socking away billions for tax cuts.
“In my opinion, additional restrictions on SNAP purchases will undermine the effectiveness and the efficiency of the program,” Brookings Institute researcher Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach told a congressional committee in 2017.
“In particular, based on my research on SNAP and food consumption I believe that SNAP restrictions: will be difficult to structure in practice, will be inefficiently targeted, and in many cases—such as a proposed ban of the purchase of soft drinks or sweetened beverages—will be unlikely to change consumption patterns. There are better policy options for promoting healthy eating patterns, both for SNAP recipients and for all Americans,” Whitmore Schanzenbach said.
But Republicans who run the Golden Dome of Wisdom, now redder than a cherry Jolly Rancher, are adding to the stigma of receiving help. An embarrassing scene at the checkout just might prompt the pulling up of bootstraps.
It’s for their own good. Tough love, with precious little love.
Low-income Iowans are like the rest of us. People who don’t receive assistance also buy too much pop and sweet treats. Companies spend mountains of money to market sugar water as “sport drinks.” We all live in that culture. We can cut people on SNAP some slack, the same slack we cut ourselves when doughnuts appear in the breakroom.
These are people, not statistics.
Iowa is one of the 10 most obese states, according to U.S. News and World Report. This, it would seem, is a much wider, broader problem. But SNAP households are the only ones taking the blame.
I am not without candy, so I won’t cast the first fistful of caramel corn. Besides, I might spill my pop.
(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@the gazette.com
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