Marco Rubio pushes for SNAP benefits to ‘explicitly exclude’ junk food, sodas to curb obesity crisis, reduce medical costs

On Tuesday, Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio called for Congress to reform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to “explicitly exclude” junk food items and sugary sodas in an effort to curb the nation’s obesity crisis and reduce medical costs.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published this week, Rubio announced that he plans to introduce legislation that would push those on federal SNAP benefits to purchase more nutritional food options.

He stated that his bill would no longer allow sodas and prepared desserts to be SNAP-eligible. Instead, the federal benefits program would promote healthier choices, including milk, pure fruit juice, protein, produce, and oatmeal.

According to a 2016 United States Department of Agriculture report, in SNAP households, “20 cents out of every dollar was spent on sweetened beverages, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar.” Only 40 cents of every dollar went towards items such as meat, fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and bread.

“Taxpayers are projected to spend $240 billion on junk food, with more than $60 billion going exclusively to soda, over the next decade,” Rubio wrote.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data revealed that more than 40% of adults in the U.S. are obese, while approximately half suffer from diabetes or prediabetes.

“These diseases can be debilitating. They are also extremely expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in medical costs each year. That SNAP plays a role in their spread is immoral, irresponsible and reprehensible,” he continued.

Rubio’s coming bill would provide “common-sense” reform to the SNAP program “at no additional cost and, in the long run, reduce medical expenses,” he wrote.

The senator argued that if junk foods and sugary drinks were no longer SNAP-eligible, stores would be incentivized to stock healthier options for customers. Rubio also stated that his proposed legislation is a nonpartisan issue and noted that former agriculture secretaries from the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations believed that “ignoring nutrition is, quite literally, killing a thousand Americans every day.”

Rubio said he would work with one of those former secretaries, Tom Vilsack, to reform the SNAP benefits. In 2018, Vilsack advised legislators to “officially make diet quality a core SNAP objective.”

“As with everything in Washington, this proposal has opponents. But there is nothing compassionate or responsible about spending taxpayer dollars on empty calories that contribute to health crises,” Rubio added.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!