Colorado has joined 22 other states in proposing restrictions on what SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ) recipients are permitted to buy – a politically convenient response to food insecurity that targets the choices of people struggling to eat rather than the systems that make eating well out of reach.
The waiver would prohibit the use of benefits to purchase any ready-to-drink beverages containing natural or artificial sweeteners – including soda, sports drinks, sweetened teas, and diet drinks – at any Colorado retailer. Recipients can, however, purchase things like sports drinks packets or an iced coffee that includes milk.
The name “Healthy Choice Waiver” implies a policy grounded in health. The reality is that energy and resources spent on rules that police grocery carts – while leaving untouched every structural condition driving the 16-year life expectancy gaps in counties across Colorado – only kick the can of addressing real barriers to health equity further down the road.
In El Paso County, more than 82,000 residents – among them thousands of children – rely on SNAP (sometimes still called food stamps) to eat. Thousands more earn just enough to be turned away from the program, but nowhere near enough to consistently afford nourishing food. This stands to reason, given a household has to be almost 200% below the federal poverty line to qualify. For those who do qualify, receiving benefits doesn’t guarantee what most food-privileged persons take for granted: the ability to choose and afford food that actually nourishes.
For many SNAP families, every trip to the grocery store is an exercise in negotiating sustenance – not choosing nourishment. The average SNAP benefit per person per meal per day hovers around $2.06. In 2024, before the most recent grocery prices spikes, a modest meal in Colorado averaged $3.55. For the working poor, anything above that $2.06 meal budget doesn’t exist in isolation – it competes with rent, utilities and other necessities, including in many cases the compounding costs of getting anywhere without reliable transportation.
Rather than increasing benefits to cover the cost of a modest meal, the state has chosen to police what people purchase with the inadequate resources they have. Ultimately, this just limits choices; it doesn’t give people better choices to make.
That is not a health policy. That is poverty management dressed up as public health. It fosters triage decisions: maybe you can use your SNAP to buy a healthy $2 meal at a grocery store – say, an egg and two slices of bread and a piece of fruit – but do you have the transportation to get there? Do you have the space to store and cook that food? If not, maybe your only choice to purchase food is at a convenience store. That’s where many SNAP recipients shop out of necessity, where they might use their SNAP to buy a candy bar or a small bag of chips. The state’s new waiver has nothing to say about any of that. It is concerned only with what you wash it down with.
Investing in meaningful wages, rising housing costs, affordable neighborhood food retail, expanding produce incentive programs, and building the transportation infrastructure that connects people to healthy food – these are the structural changes that would make a Healthy Choice Waivers unnecessary. Until that day comes, the most honest intervention available is a benefit that keeps up with the rising costs of food. SNAP is a federal entitlement that Congress creates, funds, and can choose to strengthen – or cut. In July 2025, through H.R. 1, Congress chose to cut it by more than $186 billion over ten years. That is the decision we are living inside of when we talk about what $2.06 buys at a grocery store. Making changes to these benefits is an act of Congress – one I hope we all remember at the ballot box come November.
This is not an argument for soda. This is a call for investments that give people the resources to support healthier lives. According to a 2024 study in the American Journal of Public Health, “SNAP participants purchase and consume healthier foods immediately after receiving monthly benefits than later in the same cycle, indicating that increased frequency and value of benefits could improve diet quality more ethically and efficiently than item restrictions.”
When people have real resources, they purchase real food. The data bears that out. What people do not need is the state standing at the register wagging a finger and further limiting choice.
Patience Kabwasa is the executive director of Food to Power, a nonprofit cultivating a healthy, equitable food system in the greater Colorado Springs community. She received no compensation for this opinion piece.
