OH, SNAP!

In 2026, the items you can purchase with SNAP (formerly food stamps) will change. During the government shutdown, there was a lot of confusion and argument over whether or not the program would continue its payments.

SNAP BENEFITS HELP PROVIDE FOOD FOR MANY AMERICANS; GRAPHIC BY ROYCE POHLMAN

What is SNAP?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal program that provides money for groceries to low-income families across the US, serving about 40 million people. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the total government spending for SNAP in fiscal year 2023 was $112.8 billion (out of an overall $196 billion budget for the USDA), with 94% of that money directly reaching families’ wallets. The average household that receives SNAP benefits gets about $190 per person each month. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average monthly grocery bill for a household of one is around $300 for a moderate spending plan. Between rent, utilities, and debt payments, a minimum wage paycheck can be eaten up rapidly. SNAP provides low-income people and families basic means for groceries, allowing them to use their employment income on other expenses. Still, the average SNAP payment is below the average grocery bill, but it’s a welcome boost nonetheless. 

Basic arithmetic dictates SNAP constituted around 1.8% of the total US federal budget in fiscal year 2023. (For scale, the Social Security program constituted about 21.3% of the budget in that same fiscal year.) What all these digits come out to is one key point: SNAP is a fairly small but essential government expense.

Changes

Effective at the beginning of 2026, the SNAP program will change. Namely, the items you can purchase with the benefits will change. According to an approved waiver regarding SNAP, users will also not be able to purchase with their benefits products like: 

• “Fruits, nuts, or other ingredients in combination with sugar, chocolate, honey, or other natural or artificial sweeteners in the form of bars, drops, or pieces.” 

• “All other drinks or punches with natural fruit or vegetable juice which contain 50 percent or less by volume natural fruit or vegetable juice; a typical example is Hi-C.”

• “Beverage mixes and ingredients intended to be made into taxable beverages; liquid or frozen, concentrated or non-concentrated…” 

• Vitamins and minerals

In plain terms, some foods that SNAP users won’t be able to use their benefits on in 2026 include granola and granola bars “unless they contain flour,” inexpensive fruit beverages, concentrated fruit juice, drink mixes, and supplements.

Many of these changes will limit how far SNAP dollars can stretch at the grocery store. Frozen fruit juice concentrates usually run about one dollar cheaper than their bottled liquid counterparts, and granola bars make quick, inexpensive, and relatively nutritious snacks. It’s no big news that healthier, organic foods are generally more expensive, since they’re harder to mass-produce and transport. US-based food factories have easy access to a vast interstate highway system where semi-trucks can zip across the continent and deliver boxes to wherever they’re ordered, but small organic farms in remote areas are more difficult to export from. Additionally, there’s not much incentive for those remote farmers to not use pesticides and fertilizers; they get higher crop yields and thus higher profits if they use them. So generally, healthier, organic, all-natural foods are more expensive. This leaves processed foods as a more economical option. What the 2026 changes in SNAP will do is make those cheaper foods less accessible to lower-income consumers.

Impacts

One Clear Creek Amana High School student provided valuable insight into how these changes may affect SNAP users. “This change will negatively impact my family,” they said, “because we buy a lot of these items with our food money. Both my sister and I are iron-deficient, so we need to buy vitamin C and iron supplements. Supplements are not very cheap.” For many, dietary supplements are necessities, just like nutritious food. Some diets, conditions, and genetic factors can impact beyond one’s control how much of a certain nutrient their body receives or makes useful. Anemia (iron deficiency) is a serious condition, and some people’s diets or genetics make them more likely to experience it. Limiting and inhibiting access to supplements may pose a serious risk for some people, and paying for supplements with their own money may be difficult. Bottles of supplements can run up to $20—over one tenth of the average SNAP payment for one person.

Government Shutdown

The student continued, “During the government shutdown, we've had to buy some groceries with our income, which we don't really have enough of to buy all the food we need. We've had to rely on the food pantry and Hy-Vee for dinner multiple times, neither of which have the healthiest options.”

When Congress couldn’t agree on a federal budget for fiscal year 2026, the government shut down on September 30, and lasted for 43 days. This was the longest government shut down in US history. There was a lot of confusion on whether SNAP would continue to hand out benefits during that period. Some families missed out on payments because of this.

The Supreme Court agreed to the Trump administration’s argument that SNAP should not have been funded during the shutdown. As a result of this, the government was allowed to withhold payments from SNAP users during the period.

Conclusion

This is a humanitarian issue shrouded in politics. Issues like this shouldn’t require sides to be taken, and don’t need to be argued over at every turn. Both Republicans and Democrats use SNAP. When universal human issues—climate change, sustainability, healthcare, water, food, etc.—are politicized, progress stalls and people are hurt.

Try to find a SNAP user who wants their elected officials to limit their access to the benefits of the program they rely on. These SNAP changes will serve to limit how far food dollars can stretch. They will affect the budgets of families and cause negative impacts for many. If food is a universal human right, then access to it should not be subject to petty partisanism.

Investing in human interest is never wasteful. Bettering people’s lives is never pointless. Granola bars and supplements aren’t the causes of our national debt.