Imagine this: The cheerful, if slightly scolding voices of the self-checkout machines punctuate the steady hum of fluorescent lights. Please place the item in the bagging area. The messages ricochet across an Iowa grocery store, a kind of ambient chorus while, at one of the few remaining manned checkout lines, a cashier squints at his screen. He punches in a code. The monitor responds with a short, unmistakable drone — the kind that needs no translation: No.
The customer shifts, heat creeping up their neck, as another shopper drifts into the line behind them. “I don’t understand,” they say, glancing down at their EBT card. “I was able to buy these last time I was here.”
The cashier tries again. The computer buzzes, stubborn as ever. On the counter sits the offending item: a plastic cup of cut fruit from the deli, the kind that comes with a sealed lid and a disposable spoon tucked inside. It’s confusing, he thinks, because earlier that day he rang up a slice of cake from the bakery (fork included) and SNAP covered it without protest. The system approved it. Cake passed. Fruit did not.
The moment is ordinary enough to pass unnoticed, except that it is about to become far more common: in grocery stores across Iowa and, as new federal waivers take effect, in at least 18 states rolling out SNAP purchasing restrictions throughout 2026. Under the current administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved state requests to limit which foods can be purchased with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
It’s a move presented as a matter of public health, but one that both food security experts and supermarket industry leaders predict will shift the burden — and the cost — of enforcement onto grocery store workers, retailers and, ultimately, everyone waiting in line.
Efforts to narrow the scope of SNAP are hardly new. For decades, conservative lawmakers have framed the program less as a nutritional safety net than as a moral hazard, invoking Reagan-era caricatures about “welfare queens.” What has changed is the specificity. In step with the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, the rhetoric has sharpened into a concrete administrative goal: not simply reducing SNAP’s footprint, but cataloging, item by item, what participants can and cannot purchase with their benefits.
Five states — Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah and West Virginia — implemented their restrictions on Jan. 1, with Iowa rolling out the most restrictive SNAP purchasing rules in the country, tying food eligibility to the state’s complex sales-tax code (thereby turning, as the Food Research and Action Council put it in a recent email, “grocery checkouts into bureaucratic minefields”).
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In a notice sent to the state’s SNAP recipients, certain foods, including “soda” and “candy or candy-coated items,” were singled out as ineligible. But the definitions of “soda” and “candy” are inconsistent and difficult to interpret, leaving participants unsure what they can buy without risking a rejection at the register. In a recent report, FRAC flagged head-scratching discrepancies: dried fruit leather is barred, while a Twix bar slips through (because it contains flour); Snickers bars are ineligible, but Snickers ice cream is fine. And thanks to additional restrictions on certain prepared foods, the rules reach peak absurdity: a fruit cup sold with a spoon is forbidden, yet a slice of cake with a fork is fine.
Shoppers and cashiers alike are left navigating this maze, unsure whether their next purchase will pass or fail.
The National Grocers Association has been sounding the alarm for nearly two years. In February 2024, it issued a statement denouncing Republicans’ new SNAP plan — and a related proposal that would have collected detailed SNAP purchasing data with the eventual aim of restricting what participants could buy, in exchange for fully funding WIC — as, in the NGA’s words, “Orwellian.”
The association warned that the plan would carry both financial and operational consequences for stores and shoppers alike.
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“Restricting eligible items to those approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will quickly drive-up food costs and strangle the program with needless red tape with no meaningful public health outcome to show in return,” the letter said. “The government will need to categorize more than 600,000 products and update the list each year with thousands more products. Grocery store cashiers will become the food police, telling parents what they can and cannot feed their families.”
Fast-forward two years, the NGA’s worst fears have come to pass.
In a Dec. 22 emailed statement, the organization framed the new 2026 SNAP waivers as a burden on the very stores that have long been trusted stewards of the program, from family-owned Main Street shops to regional chains. According to the NGA, tens of thousands of items — perhaps hundreds of thousands — will now land on SNAP-restricted lists, forcing stores to reprogram systems, retrain employees and educate customers about the shifting rules.
“Ultimately, some of the higher costs must be passed onto consumers in the highly competitive food retailing industry, so consumers stand to ultimately see higher food prices and reduced purchasing power.”
“These regulatory burdens have the potential to disrupt store operations and slow checkout lines as retailers work in good faith to implement and enforce the new rules,” the statement read. “For SNAP reforms to Make America Healthy Again, policymakers must provide clear, consistent definitions and a realistic implementation timeline.”
It continued: “Independent grocers are proud economic drivers, creating local jobs and generating tax revenue, but they need certainty and common sense, not more costly red tape handed down by bureaucrats.”
And the consequences extend far beyond SNAP recipients or grocery-store employees. A national SNAP Restrictions Impact Analysis estimates that implementing the new rules will cost U.S. retailers $1.6 billion upfront, with an additional $759 million in annual ongoing expenses. Individual stores, the report notes, are likely to lose thousands of dollars in revenue every week.
The final line lands like a gut punch:
“Ultimately, some of the higher costs must be passed onto consumers in the highly competitive food retailing industry, so consumers stand to ultimately see higher food prices and reduced purchasing power.”
Prices were already high coming into 2026 — despite the president dismissing affordability as a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats — and now, with Republicans pressing ahead on SNAP restrictions despite grocery industry leaders’ warnings, every item in shoppers’ carts carries the possibility of edging even higher.
Punishing SNAP recipients, it turns out, may be a cost that all of us share at the checkout.
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