Support for Foods Allowed Under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

C Ross Hatton; Cindy W Leung; Julia A Wolfson

doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2024.12.008

Support for Foods Allowed Under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Am J Prev Med. 2024 Dec 10:S0749-3797(24)00430-6. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2024.12.008. Online ahead of print.

Authors

C Ross Hatton¹, Cindy W Leung², Julia A Wolfson³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, MA; Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Electronic address: [email protected].
² Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
³ Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD; Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.

PMID: 39667709
DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2024.12.008

Abstract

Introduction: Millions of U.S. families rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to afford food. Congress has proposed changing the items eligible for purchase with SNAP, which could influence participants' diets. Understanding attitudes towards these changes overall, by political party, and by SNAP participation can identify proposals with bipartisan support and center SNAP participant preferences.

Methods: This cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults (n=4,470) from November 3-14, 2023 evaluated support for four changes to SNAP purchases. In 2024, descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to evaluate overall support for these four policies and to test for differences by political party and SNAP participation.

Results: A majority of U.S. adults (68.1%) across political parties supported allowing the purchase of hot and prepared foods under SNAP. A slim majority (51.6%) supported creating nutrition guidelines to guide allowable items. Policies to exclude sugary drinks (38.7%) and unhealthy items generally (46.2%) were less popular.

Conclusions: Policies to expand SNAP were more popular than restrictions, both overall and across political parties, and restrictions were particularly unpopular among SNAP participants. Bipartisan support for policies to expand SNAP may help these proposals advance during Farm Bill negotiations and would align with the preferences of SNAP participants.