Image of Governor Pillen at press conference announcing food restrictions for Nebraska SNAP on April, 7 2025
Last Thursday, April 23, 2026, Nebraska DHHS announced that in addition to soda and energy drinks, candy would also be restricted from purchases using SNAP benefits in Nebraska. The projected implementation date is November 1, 2026.
In addition to the costs below, this will likely require additional investment from the state to identify products, educate the public and retailers, and potentially hire more staff.
As we discuss below, SNAP food restrictions are not an effective use of our resources and time. There is no discernable difference between the food SNAP users purchase and others. Also, USDA’s own studies have shown SNAP food restrictions do very little to impact healthy eating and add stigma to purchasing food with SNAP.
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Last year, Nebraska was the first state to receive USDA approval to restrict SNAP participants from purchasing certain foods with their benefits. Dubbed the SNAP Healthy Choices Waiver program, Nebraska was approved to ban the purchase of soda and energy drinks with SNAP benefits during a two-year pilot. Nebraska was also among the first to put our SNAP restriction into place on January 1, 2026.
Aside from the questionable legality of these restrictions (see ongoing litigation), and the frustrating public health argument that only seems to extend to people living in poverty, we were curious how much public funding it took to make it happen.
To find out, we did an Open Records Request with Nebraska’s SNAP administering agency, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and asked. They replied on Oct. 8, 2025. Here’s what we learned:
- Over the planned two-year pilot, DHHS planned to hire 4 program specialists and 1 dietician to manage the project. Salaries and benefits for these staff and supervision came to $355,799.74.
- Client education costs totaled $200,000.00.
- Travel costs totaled $10,000.00.
- The state contracted with Public Consulting Group to be the pilot’s evaluation partner, a requirement for any USDA SNAP pilot, for $613,778.00.
- Although the fantastic and meaningful SNAP-Ed program was defunded nationwide by H.R.1, the proposed budget we received also included funding to contract with SNAP-Ed at UNL in Nebraska for $150,000. These funds were likely redirected.
- In total, the two-year soda and energy drink ban in Nebraska reportedly cost $1,726,607.36, which was to be split between the state and federal government: $1,088,906.66 state / $637,700.70 federal.
An additional $100,000 was used to buy a Nielsen IQ product list for all soda and energy drinks banned under the state’s definitions, which was distributed to SNAP retailers as a one-time support.
Governor Pillen has repeatedly set goals of cutting costs and balancing budgets through cutting services and staff at DHHS. In fact, his office enacted cuts of $152M this year.
Huge financial penalties will soon be enforced based on a state’s SNAP error rate because of H.R.1. Couldn’t these funds be better used to keep our error rate low? Couldn’t these funds be better spent reinforcing our SNAP workforce to better process applications? Or maybe get benefits out more quickly or phones answered in a reasonable amount of time?
Our state doesn’t need to waste over $1 million keeping Olli probiotic soda and ginger ale out of SNAP participants’ carts, and struggling families don’t need the government telling them what they can and can’t buy at the grocery store.
We look forward to seeing the end of this pilot and all unlawful SNAP food restrictions nationwide – hopefully sooner rather than later.