By Stephen Smoot
“For a long time, I’ve talked about the fact that in SNAP, the “N” should stand for nutrition,” shared Governor Patrick Morrisey in a video release last month. He added that “Certainly, we can make big progress going after obesity, diabetes, and a lot of other tough medical conditions.”
Morrisey has submitted a request to the federal government to provide a waiver to West Virginia that would allow the state to remove soda type drinks, such as colas, root beers, and other types of sugary carbonated beverages, from availability to purchase using SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.
Support for Morrisey’s move came immediately from the American Heart Association. Their National Executive Vice President Mark Schoberi expressed excitement “to see this leadership in particular West Virginia, because we know that one in six West Virginians actually participate in the SNAP program.”
West Virginia will, if approved, join Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska in having sugary sodas removed. No other foods are on the waiver list. Unlike even some junk-style snack foods, sodas offer zero nutritional value, but each serving comes packed with high levels of, usually, corn syrup based sugar and sodium.
Additionally, the state long ago ordered the removal of sugared sodas from school vending machines. They cannot be used in the Women’s, Infants, and Children nutrition program or school lunches.
There is also neither the inclination nor the legal right to prevent SNAP recipients from purchasing sodas with their own cash money.
One of the drivers nationally of removing soda from SNAP comes from the sheer amount spent on it. National Public Radio reported in “Food Stamps For Soda: Time to End Billion-Dollar Subsidy For Sugary Drinks?” that the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed that “SNAP households spend about 10 percent of food dollars on sugary drinks, which is about three times more than the amount they spend on milk.”
The article pointed out that New York City alone saw “more than $75 million in sugary drink purchases each year that are subsidized by US taxpayers.”
Opposition to Morisey’s move rose quickly and focused largely on class related issues. A publication called West Virginia Watch ran a commentary entitled “Morrisey’s Request to Change SNAP Shows Poor West Virginians Lose When Rich People Represent Us” and called the move “poverty-shaming.”
In some areas, SNAP fueled purchases of soda creates an entire economic dynamic. National Review’s Kevin Williamson in 2013 wrote about the profound economic decay of eastern Kentucky. One of the symptoms lay in what he described as the “federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency.”
Williamson at the time quoted a former high school teacher who turned newspaper publisher in Owsley County, Kentucky as saying “When I was at the school, we’d see kids come in from a long weekend just starved to death. But you’ll see those parents at the grocery store with their 15 cases of Pepsi, and that’s all they’ve got in the buggy — you know what they’re doing. Everybody knows, nobody does anything.”
While no reports indicate that such fraud has grown prevalent in West Virginia, its appearance elsewhere raises concerns.
The other side of Morrissey’s statement on applying for the SNAP waiver included promoting better availability of lean meat, fresh produce, and “good opportunities for some hot foods for West Virginians, for some products that you’ve never seen before.”
A year ago in May, the World Journal of Diabetes published an article entitled “Rising Tide: The Global Surge of Type 2 Diabetes In Children and Adolescents Demands Action Now.” The authors warned that “the looming wave of diabetes-related complications in early adulthood is anticipated to strain the healthcare budgets in most countries.
Indeed, West Virginia’s Public Employees’ Insurance Agency’s financial struggles represent an early warning flag for that very issue. PEIA last fall cited the expansion of both the need and cost of diabetes drugs as a contributing problem to its shortfall coming into 2025.
Type 2 diabetes results from the body losing its ability to control blood sugar levels. This happens from consistently high consumption of foods high in glucose. Studies indicate that high fructose corn syrup based products has a strong tendency to bring about impaired glucose tolerance and increase the risk for diabetes. Almost all sodas use high fructose corn syrup due to its cost effectiveness over traditional sugar.
When blood sugars remain at high levels for too long, the sugars act as an abrasive, damaging blood vessel walls and organs, which can lead to blood clots and heart attacks, as well as kidney failure and a plethora of other problems.
Uncontrolled childhood diabetes will almost certainly lead to health problems typically identified with middle or old age popping up in adults in much younger years.
