The Great MAHA Experiment Begins: Five States Ban Junk Food SNAP Purchases

by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2025

(Jan. 2, 2026) — On January 1, 2026, the most aggressive nutrition-linked reform in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) took effect in five U.S. states. Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia have officially banned SNAP purchases of specific categories of food widely associated with obesity and chronic disease: sweetened beverages, candy, and, in Iowa’s case, all foods deemed taxable under state law. Together, these five states represent a test case for the sweeping policy agenda of the Kennedy-Rollins HHS-USDA partnership, better known under the reform umbrella of Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).

This is not a pilot in rhetoric only. These states are not “encouraging” healthier choices. They are altering the legal definition of what counts as food under SNAP, via USDA demonstration project waivers governed by Section 17 of the Food and Nutrition Act. This means the bans are codified into law, enforced at checkout by point-of-sale (POS) software, and fully binding on 1.4 million low-income Americans across these states. The waivers run for two years with possible three-year extensions—enough time to scale or fail in dramatic fashion.

Not Just One Ban: A Patchwork of State Definitions

Each state has its own operational definitions of the banned products:

• Indiana bans “soft drinks” and “candy,” defining them based on sweetener content and excluding milk-based drinks and refrigerated confections.
• Iowa applies the most sweeping restriction by aligning with its own Department of Revenue’s list of taxable foods, including prepared and snack foods.
• Nebraska targets both “soda/soft drinks” and “energy drinks,” defined by carbonation and stimulant ingredients like caffeine, taurine, or guarana.
• Utah bans sweetened carbonated beverages unless they contain over 50% real juice or milk.
• West Virginia adopts a narrow ban on sweetened carbonated sodas, excluding unflavored carbonated waters.

Retailers in each state are now responsible for programming their POS systems to enforce these granular distinctions, many of which hinge on subtle product characteristics that may not be reflected clearly on product barcodes.

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A National Test of Real-World Health Outcomes

What matters now are measurable health outcomes. The MAHA reforms are no longer aspirational. They are law. And that turns five states into five data laboratories.

There are primary outcome metrics that will determine policy success include:

• New diagnoses of type 2 diabetes (incidence rates)
• Reduction in HbA1c levels among diagnosed diabetics
• Number of diabetes medication discontinuations due to clinical reversal
• New diagnoses of metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and reversals of diagnoses.
• BMI and waist-to-hip ratio distributions across SNAP households
• Cost-of-care reductions tied to prevention and reversal of metabolic disorders

These are the outcomes that matter. Purchasing patterns, dietary surveys, or self-reported behavior changes are proxies—useful only insofar as they predict longitudinal clinical gains.

Every state that adopted the waiver promised evaluation. Now, it must deliver. That means pairing EHR data from Medicaid and Federally Qualified Health Centers with SNAP eligibility flags and tracking these health endpoints over 12, 24, and 60 months.

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