New research finds that restricting sugary drinks from SNAP benefits changes purchasing behavior, but substitution, stigma and unanswered questions about long-term health make the policy more complicated than it first appears.
For families who use food assistance, a new policy experiment is underway across the country: Can the government improve nutrition by changing what SNAP benefits can buy?
A new National Bureau of Economic Research study offers one of the clearest early answers yet.
Yes, the restrictions appear to change what people buy.
But the research also finds something policymakers cannot ignore: Some households substitute toward other eligible beverages, and SNAP recipients report feeling more stigma after restrictions take effect.
For California families, the findings are especially worth watching. California’s SNAP program is called CalFresh, and while California is not currently among the states with an approved sugary-drink restriction, policymakers now have real-world evidence from states that moved first.
Researchers Hunt Allcott, Amy Finkelstein, Anna Grummon and Matthew J. Notowidigdo analyzed what happened after states began restricting the use of SNAP benefits for sugary drinks.
As of July 2026, 23 states had approved policies that restrict SNAP purchases of sugary drinks. The researchers studied the first 10 states implementing restrictions and compared purchasing behavior with households in states without the policies.
During the first half of 2026, SNAP households in those states reduced their retail purchases of excluded drinks by 12.4%.
The estimate had a standard error of 1.0 percentage point, indicating a relatively precise finding.
That matters because one argument against restrictions has been that people could simply use cash or other resources to purchase the same drinks.
The early evidence suggests many households did not simply continue buying the same amount of restricted beverages.
The policy changed purchasing behavior.
But that does not necessarily mean it changed people’s overall diets.
Buying less soda is not the same as becoming healthier
This is where the research gets more interesting.
In states where only some sugary drinks were excluded from SNAP eligibility, households partially shifted their purchases toward beverages that remained eligible.
That creates an important distinction.
If a household buys less of one restricted sugary drink but replaces it with another sugary beverage that SNAP still covers, the policy may have a smaller effect on overall sugar consumption than the initial 12.4% number suggests.
That does not mean the restrictions are ineffective.
It means policymakers need to distinguish between three different outcomes:
Buying less of a restricted product.
Consuming fewer sugary drinks overall.
Improving long-term health.
The new study provides strong evidence for the first. It does not yet prove the third.
That distinction is key whenever public policy turns a purchasing change into a health claim.
The study found another effect that cannot be seen on a grocery receipt.
Researchers surveyed SNAP recipients before and after restrictions were implemented and found that recipients reported increased perceptions of stigma following implementation.
That finding deserves more attention.
Food assistance is not simply a transaction between an EBT card and a checkout scanner. For families already dealing with financial pressure, using public benefits can carry a social and emotional burden.
A policy intended to encourage healthier purchases can therefore have two effects at the same time:
It can change what people buy.
And it can make some recipients feel more singled out or judged.
The research does not establish that increased stigma causes people to stop using SNAP, nor does it show that the social cost outweighs the potential health benefit.
But it does establish that the experience of receiving SNAP can change when purchasing restrictions are introduced.
That should be part of the policy discussion.
What about the $1.1 billion estimate?
The NBER researchers also modeled what could happen if sugary drinks were excluded from SNAP nationwide.
Their model estimates approximately $1.1 billion in annual benefits, with roughly 70% of those modeled benefits coming from reductions in health-care costs.
That number needs context.
It is not $1.1 billion in health-care savings that have already occurred.
The researchers combine observed purchasing changes with other parameters to estimate potential welfare effects. The health-care savings are therefore a projection.
The distinction is important because the real-world evidence is still relatively new.
Researchers can already observe what happened to purchases.
They cannot yet point to nationwide evidence showing that these restrictions have reduced diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease or health-care spending.
Those outcomes require more time and additional research.
California is not currently listed among the states with approved USDA SNAP food-restriction waivers. The federal government’s current list includes states that have moved ahead with restrictions, but California is not among them.
That means California families receiving CalFresh are not currently subject to the sugary-drink restrictions examined in this study.
But California policymakers can now watch the experiment happening elsewhere.
That is important because CalFresh is already going through significant changes in 2026.
Parriva has previously examined those changes in its coverage of CalFresh benefit changes affecting immigrant families and other California households, including changes to eligibility and work requirements.
And another Parriva policy effort, SB 961: a proposal aimed at helping thousands of California college students access CalFresh, illustrates a broader point: Changes to food-assistance rules can look technical in Sacramento while having very practical consequences for people trying to put food on the table.
The new SNAP research adds another question to that conversation:
If California ever considers restricting sugary drinks through CalFresh, what should the state expect to happen?
California can learn from the states that went first
The new evidence gives California several questions to ask before considering a similar policy.
Does the restriction cover enough products to meaningfully change sugary-drink consumption?
Do consumers substitute toward other sugary beverages?
Does the purchasing change persist over time?
Do actual health outcomes improve?
And perhaps just as importantly:
Can policymakers improve nutrition without increasing stigma for the people receiving assistance?
Those questions matter because a policy should ultimately be judged against its stated goal.
If the goal is to reduce soda purchases, the early evidence is encouraging.
If the goal is to reduce overall sugary-drink consumption, the substitution findings make the answer less certain.
If the goal is to improve long-term health, policymakers need to wait for health evidence.
The Latino health connection needs to be handled carefully
There is a natural reason for Parriva to examine this issue through a Latino-community lens. Latino families are an important part of California’s CalFresh population, and food access, affordability and health are closely connected.
But the new NBER study does not establish that Latino SNAP recipients respond differently to sugary-drink restrictions.
That distinction matters.
Parriva should not claim that Latinos are disproportionately affected by these particular restrictions unless future research establishes it.
Instead, the more useful question is how policymakers should evaluate health interventions in communities that already face significant health-access challenges.
That is a distinction Parriva has explored in its coverage of other health research. For example, its reporting on a landmark HPV study showing cervical cancer deaths near zero among vaccinated young women demonstrates why actual health outcomes matter when evaluating prevention policies.
The lesson applies here.
A change in what people purchase is important evidence.
But it is not the same thing as proof that a policy has improved health.
So, do SNAP soda restrictions work?
The answer depends on what “work” means.
If the goal is to change purchasing behavior, the early evidence says yes.
The NBER study found a 12.4% reduction in purchases of drinks excluded from SNAP among households in the first 10 states studied.
But if the goal is to make people healthier, the evidence is not there yet.
There are at least three reasons to remain cautious.
First, substitution. Some households shifted toward beverages that remained eligible.
Second, stigma. Recipients reported greater perceptions of stigma after restrictions were introduced.
Third, time. The restrictions are too new to provide definitive evidence about long-term health outcomes.
None of those findings proves the policy is wrong.
They show why the policy is more complicated than the headline number.
For California policymakers and CalFresh families, the next phase of the experiment may be more important than the first.
Researchers should continue watching whether purchasing changes persist, whether households substitute toward other sugary drinks and whether measurable health improvements eventually emerge.
Policymakers should also pay attention to how recipients experience the restrictions.
The USDA describes its state SNAP waivers as demonstrations intended to generate evidence about the effects of these policies.
California therefore has an opportunity to learn without being the first state to experiment.
The state can watch what happens elsewhere, examine the evidence and decide whether any future CalFresh restriction would actually deliver the health benefits supporters expect.
For now, the evidence gives us a carefully qualified answer:
SNAP sugary-drink restrictions appear to change what people buy.
Whether they ultimately make people healthier and whether those health benefits outweigh substitution and stigma remains an open question.
For California, that may be the most important finding of all.
Primary research
The study discussed in this article is NBER Working Paper 35659, “The Effects of SNAP Sugary Drink Restrictions on Consumption and Welfare.” Read the full NBER study
For the current federal status of SNAP food-restriction waivers, readers can consult the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s SNAP waiver information. See the USDA SNAP waiver information
