SNAP Food Restriction Waivers

How You Can Help Protect SNAP Choice

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps over 40 million people put food on the table by providing monthly benefits on an Electronic Benefit Transfer card.

State efforts to restrict what SNAP recipients can buy with their benefits are expanding across the country – despite evidence that they are harmful, burdensome, and ineffective.

States are already strained by H.R.1, facing higher costs, new error-rate penalties, and heavy administrative demands. Adding food restrictions is fiscally irresponsible, requiring costly retailer updates and more staff time, while research shows SNAP participants eat no differently than other Americans.

Policing food choices is ineffective, undermines American values, and worsens food insecurity. The worst health outcome is hunger. The real solution is strengthening SNAP with adequate benefits, access to healthy foods, and proven produce incentives.

SNAP Restrictions Are Spreading –
See What’s Happening in Your State

SNAP Food Restriction Waivers Across the Country

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Explore The Impacts of SNAP Restrictions

Restricting choice is not the answer.

Restricting food choices ignores the real drivers of poor diets — insufficient income, affordability, and proximity to healthy food — while adding costly administrative burdens that destabilize SNAP. SNAP restrictions drive stigma in the checkout line, undermine participant autonomy and dignity, and shift burdens onto retailers. If the door to restricting choice is opened, then a slippery slope is created, without solving any of the fundamental issues of benefit inadequacy or lack of access to healthy and affordable food.

Impact for Families
For families, restrictions mean stigma, reduced autonomy, and fewer choices where to shop as retailers may choose to withdraw from EBT if they cannot meet their requirements. Restrictions increase food insecurity by narrowing already limited grocery options, while ignoring structural issues like access and disregarding the individual needs of those who face homelessness, lack cooking facilities, or have no reliable means of transportation.
Impact for States
For states, restrictions add expensive new layers of bureaucracy. Under the recently enacted budget reconciliation law (H.R. 1), states must now cover 75 percent of SNAP’s administrative costs. Implementing restrictions pulls resources away from what states should prioritize—lowering error rates, ensuring timely service, and supporting retailers. Many grocers, particularly in rural areas, may drop out of the program rather than comply with costly new requirements, leaving families with even fewer places to shop.
Impact for Retailers
Retailers, especially small and rural grocers, will bear significant costs from implementing these restrictions. The most significant burdens come from Point of Sale (POS) technology upgrades, compliance monitoring, reduced checkout productivity, and lost sales. Given the industry’s slim margins, many retailers will be forced to raise prices, cut back on SNAP participation, or, in the case of small rural stores, shut down completely. Learn more here.

In this newly released SNAP Restrictions Impact Analysis: Report, the National Grocers Association (NGA), The Food Industry Association (FMI), and the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) surveyed members in 2025 to estimate compliance costs under proposed SNAP restrictions. The study disaggregated costs by store type —conventional supermarkets, convenience stores, small-format groceries, and supercenters — and distinguished between one-time (up-front) costs and ongoing annual expenses. The key findings are below:
- Up-front costs: $305.1 million for supermarkets, $1.0 billion for convenience stores, $11.8 million for small-format groceries, and $215.5 million for supercenters — a total of $1.6 billion.
- Ongoing annual costs: $281.4 million for supermarkets, $378.6 million for convenience stores, $18.0 million for small-format groceries, and $81.1 million for supercenters — a total of $759.1 million annually.
Because estimates assume the same per-store cost within each format, the large number of convenience stores and supermarkets drives the aggregate totals.

FNS Guidance: SNAP – Clarifications on Food Restriction Waivers and Retailer Compliance (December 30, 2025)
Impact for Anti-Hunger Advocates
For the broader fight against hunger, restrictions set a dangerous precedent by turning SNAP from a program rooted in dignity and evidence into a “nanny state” experiment. Instead of addressing the root causes of hunger—poverty, low wages, and rising food prices—restrictions punish families already struggling to get by.

Explore FRAC Resources on SNAP Choice

FRAC Research Briefs
- The Risk of State SNAP Food Choice Restriction Waivers
  - This brief explains why USDA currently lacks the legal authority and operational capacity to administer state SNAP food-restriction waivers. Amid staffing cuts and reorganization, USDA has not issued essential guidance, compliance plans, or training mat erials. The brief also outlines major unanswered questions and the significant technical and financial burdens retailers would face—such as system reprogramming, state-specific product lists, and staff retraining.
- SNAP Consumer Choice
  - This brief explains why preserving SNAP consumer choice is essential to dignity, equity, and effective anti-hunger policy. Decades of research show that SNAP improves health, reduces poverty, and strengthens local economies — and that SNAP participants shop much like everyone else.
- Challenges in Researching the Diets of SNAP Recipients – Addressing Methodological Flaws and Emphasizing SNAP as an Anti-Hunger Program
  - This research brief outlines how food insecurity drives poor health and high medical costs, then details major methodological challenges in SNAP diet research, including selection bias, access barriers, misreporting, and ethical limits on experiments. The brief emphasizes SNAP’s proven role in reducing food insecurity and supporting health across the life course, and calls for research and policy that focus on strengthening benefits and access rather than blaming participants’ food choices.
FRAC Fact Sheets
- Protect and Strengthen SNAP by Preserving Consumer Choice
  - This fact sheet explains why proposals to restrict which foods SNAP participants can buy are ineffective, costly, and harmful. USDA, states, and retailers would face major administrative and financial burdens, while SNAP customers would lose dignity, autonomy, and access to medically and culturally appropriate foods.
FRAC Chat Blogs
- Iowa’s Impending SNAP Restriction Waiver Will Hurt Us All
  - This blog explains what SNAP customers and retailers need to know about Iowa’s newly-implemented SNAP restriction waiver, which represents the most restrictive food purchasing rules in the country for SNAP.
- SNAP Restrictions Will Hurt Nebraska Families and Communities, Not Help Them
  - This blog discusses USDA’s approval of state SNAP restriction waivers and how they mark an unprecedented and dangerous shift away from evidence-based anti-hunger policy. These waivers, beginning with Nebraska’s ban on soda and energy drinks, lack scientific grounding, stretch USDA’s already limited capacity, and impose major administrative and financial burdens on retailers.
- SNAP Choice Is the Right Choice – Preventing Harmful SNAP Restrictions
  - This blog explains that proposals to restrict what SNAP participants can buy misunderstand both the program and the root causes of poor health. Research and USDA evaluations show that restrictions are costly, ineffective, and burdensome for states and retailers, while undermining dignity. SNAP recipients already purchase foods similar to other households; what they lack is adequate resources. Real solutions include increasing benefit adequacy, improving food access, and expanding proven nutrition incentives.
- SNAP Restrictions Raise Prices for U.S. Retailers and Consumers, Rather Than Improving Diets
  - This blog explains how some states are diverting scarce administrative resources into SNAP food-choice restrictions that have no evidence base and ignore the real drivers of poor diets: low income, affordability, and limited food access. It highlights new industry data shows these restrictions would impose more than $1.6 billion in upfront costs and $759 million annually, hitting small and rural retailers hardest and threatening store closures.
- Protect SNAP: Expanded Food Access, Not Restrictions, Is the Prescription for Better Health Outcomes
  - This blog highlights how the Trump administration is pressuring states to adopt unprecedented SNAP food restrictions by tying these waivers to eligibility for the new Rural Health Fund created under H.R. 1 after cutting $911 billion from Medicaid, leaving 10 million more people uninsured, while the Rural Health Fund provides only $50 billion and covers only 5 percent of overall cuts. Linking this inadequate, politically influenced funding to SNAP waivers forces states toward harmful policies that drain administrative capacity, destabilize rural retailers, and worsen food insecurity.

SNAP Works: Health & Wellbeing Impacts

Hunger is a health issue. Research shows that SNAP plays a critical role, not just in alleviating poverty and food insecurity, but also in improving dietary intake and health, especially among children. Learn more in the FRAC resources below.

Six Ways to Get Involved

1. Counter Misleading Narratives
Use data from the National Grocers Association, FMI – The Food Industry Association, and the National Association of Convenience Stores to counter misleading narratives from states and USDA that downplay the real harms and costs of SNAP choice restrictions.
2. Highlight The Costs of SNAP Restrictions
Highlight that SNAP food restrictions would impose substantial costs on U.S. food retailers, especially small and rural stores. The most significant burdens come from POS technology upgrades, compliance monitoring, reduced checkout productivity, and lost sales. Given the industry’s slim margins, many retailers will be forced to raise prices, cut back on SNAP participation, or, in the case of small rural stores, shut down completely.
3. Educate Leaders
Share with elected officials that restrictions on SNAP are not only economically damaging but also fail to address the root causes of poor diets. A healthy diet can only be achieved when adequate resources, affordable food, and support are available where people live, work, and gather. Policymakers need to recognize that access to healthy food is affected by factors like proximity to food retail outlets, the ability to prepare meals independently, transportation, and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods — all of which can impact a person’s ability to access nutritious food.
4. Focus on the Fallout of H.R. 1
Remind states that they should focus on dealing with the fallout of HR1—budgeting for higher administrative costs and, for the first time in history, being required to cover a share of SNAP benefit costs based on error rates. Their focus needs to be on lowering error rates. Furthermore, implementing the new provisions of HR1 will already be administratively burdensome, requiring additional staff time and resources. Asking states to also take on food restrictions—requiring costly retailer system updates, expanded staff training, and further budget strain—is simply not fiscally responsible.
5. Emphasize Real Solutions
Have policymakers focus on real solutions. Instead of implementing costly and unworkable restrictions that threaten food access and retailer sustainability, policymakers should pursue proven, long-term solutions. Expanding full-time, living-wage employment, strengthening SNAP benefits, improving access to affordable, healthy foods, and investing in transportation networks are strategies that genuinely reduce food insecurity, improve health outcomes, and support households and communities.
6. Get Vocal on Social
Utilize these social media tools to highlight the harm of SNAP food choice restrictions.

If you have questions about SNAP choice or getting involved, please contact FRAC’s SNAP Director Gina Plata-Nino, gplata-nino@frac.org.