SC likely to join growing ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda. Here’s how.

South Carolina is expected to join a growing number of states embracing the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda by restricting some “junk food” from being purchased with federal food benefits.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, has proposed a variety of programs that he says will reduce chronic diseases. Restricting some unhealthy products, like candy and soda, from being purchased with federal food benefits is part of that agenda.

Because Kennedy’s department doesn’t run the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formally known as food stamps, he needs the help of state governments and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Several states, including South Carolina, and the USDA are poised to help make Kennedy’s proposed restrictions a reality.

With the Trump administration backing the “junk food” bans this year, 11 Republican-led states have received waivers from the USDA this summer to cut soda, and sometimes candy, from SNAP benefits. Democrat-led Colorado has also received the waiver.

“These waivers help put real food back at the center of the program and empower states to lead the charge in protecting public health,” Kennedy said in a release earlier this month.

South Carolina will likely be one of the next states. Gov. Henry McMaster hinted on X earlier this month that he would put “common-sense limits on purchases made using SNAP benefits.” McMaster’s office is prepping the executive order, but when a waiver will be submitted to the USDA is unknown.

The restrictions won’t do much to improve physical health for low-income Americans, said Orgul Ozturk, the economics department head at the University of South Carolina. The restrictions also come as the federal government makes deep cuts to a nationwide nutrition education program that can improve health outcomes for food benefit recipients.

“In general, I don’t find this kind of program, restrictions on the list of foods that people can purchase, as an effective tool if what we want to change is what people consume,” Ozturk, who has done research on SNAP, said.

The changes could effect the over 567,000, or roughly 1 in 10, South Carolinians that received SNAP benefits in April 2025, according to USDA data.

Make South Carolina Healthy Again

This is the first year the USDA has approved waivers for states to restrict ‘non-nutritious’ purchases. President Donald Trump’s USDA began approving waivers in May. The waivers are scheduled to go into effect in 2026.

South Carolina lawmakers proposed asking for restrictions earlier this year. State Rep. Stephen Frank, R-Greenville, and state Sen. Wes Climer, R-York, proposed a pair of bills that would restrict candy and soda from being purchased with SNAP benefits. The bills never made it out of committee. Frank joined Kennedy at the White House this year to unveil the “MAHA” report, which claimed SNAP compounded childhood chronic diseases.

“I think just naturally, hopefully, this will direct people to use those benefits for what they were intended for,” Frank said.

Climer also proposed a budget amendment requesting a waiver to restrict candy and soda, arguing that public dollars should not go towards junk food. Currently, SNAP is funded by the federal government, but states will have to take on some costs in future years.

The amendment failed as the language was overly broad. But other Senators said the amendment only impacted low-income South Carolinians. State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, asked Climer if he would support an amendment that also banned the governor and the state Department of Commerce from using public dollars on soda.

“It seem like we’re only fixing the people that are recipients of SNAP,” state Sen. Deon Tedder, D-Charleston, said in April. “...It doesn’t address the entire state of South Carolina.”

While introducing the amendment in April, Climer said the 2024 presidential election inspired discussions around nutrition.

“I do think this most recent 2024 campaign had the extraordinary effect of rallying Americans around the notion that what we put into our bodies can be improved,” Climer said in April.

Frank, who is a member of South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus, said the restrictions were “low-hanging fruit” for the state coalition that wants to embrace MAHA. He said restrictions should be “broader” than candy and soda. He also wants to make other MAHA-recommended changes, like removing fluoride from public water.

McMaster hasn’t clarified which foods will be swept up in the waiver. Other states have cut soda, candy, fruit and vegetable drinks that aren’t at least half “natural juice,” energy drinks and prepared desserts. Hot food, alcohol, tobacco and other non-food items are already restricted.

Shrinking SNAP benefits and nutrition education

Restricting certain foods isn’t the only change made to SNAP this summer. The budget reconciliation law, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also made deep cuts to SNAP.

Nationally, 300,000 people could be kicked off SNAP due to new cost-matching requirements, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated last week. South Carolina will only be able to avoid cutting people out of SNAP if it reduces its benefits’ error rate or pays millions to shore the program up.

Despite calls to improve healthy food access, the federal government also completely cut a program aimed at boosting nutrition with federal food benefits. Trump’s budget reconciliation law nixed the federal nutrition education program known as SNAP-Ed. SNAP-Ed was a government program that improved nutrition, said Danielle Krobath, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health.

Money will be cut off for nutrition educators beginning in October this year, unless the federal government finds another way to fund the program. Educators in other states, including Michigan and Minnesota, have already been laid off due to the cuts. The state Department of Social Services, which implements the program, did not provide an update on how the cuts will impact the state’s SNAP-Ed program.

“At this time, we are waiting on additional guidance from the US Department of Agriculture,” said DSS director of communications Will Batchelor in an email to The State.

SNAP-Ed provided 13,541 South Carolinians with nutrition or physical education training in fiscal year 2024, according to the state’s SNAP-Ed program. About $4.1 million was expected to fund South Carolina’s SNAP-Ed in fiscal year 2026, which begins in October.

Affordability and accessibility of healthy foods are the primary barriers for SNAP recipients, Ozturk said.

Ozturk and Krobath both said policymakers should provide incentives for purchasing nutritious food, rather than restrictions. The Healthy Bucks program, for example, allows SNAP beneficiaries to purchase fruits and vegetables at a discounted rate at some locations. South Carolina has opted into the program. Increasing benefits could also help, Krobath said.

“SNAP is designed to prevent food insecurity,” Krobath said. “It is an anti-poverty program, and one of the main benefits of the program is that it allows people choice in what they’re buying.”