{"id":62808,"date":"2026-02-19T17:20:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=62808"},"modified":"2026-02-19T17:20:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:20:42","slug":"snap-food-restrictions-coming-to-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/02\/19\/snap-food-restrictions-coming-to-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"SNAP food restrictions coming to Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On April 20, changes will be happening to SNAP benefits in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"9ca299\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #9ca299;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/images-3-1.webp?resize=300%2C168&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-62809 not-transparent\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Soda, energy drinks, candy, and &#8216;ultra-processed prepared desserts&#8217; will soon be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/healthysnap.myflfamilies.com\/index.html\">excluded<\/a>\u00a0from SNAP purchases, according to Healthy SNAP Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Trump administration began approving SNAP food restriction waiver requests for states in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/snap\/waivers\/foodrestriction\/nebraska\">May<\/a>, with Florida\u2019s approved in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/snap\/waivers\/foodrestriction\/florida#:~:text=FL%20SNAP%20Food%20Restriction%20Waiver,Tallahassee%2C%20FL%2032303\">August<\/a>. USDA says the waivers are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usda.gov\/about-usda\/news\/press-releases\/2025\/05\/19\/secretary-rollins-approves-first-ever-state-waiver-restrict-soda-and-energy-drinks-food-stamps\">part<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cMake America Healthy Again &#8221; agenda in an effort to promote healthy eating and reduce chronic conditions in children.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program administered by the USDA has been in existence for about sixty years, and what is eligible and ineligible has always been at a federal level and really has not changed much over the last sixty years. So, the state waivers that we&#8217;re seeing come through\u2026 the eighteen states, this is completely new,&#8221; said Angela Fernandez, Senior Vice President of Market Development at GS1 US, an organization that sets barcode standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Healthy SNAP Florida&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/healthysnap.myflfamilies.com\/recipient\/index.html\">says<\/a>&nbsp;on its website that&nbsp;\u201cFlorida is making changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to better align the program with its intended purpose: providing low-income households with access to a more nutritious diet to alleviate hunger and combat malnutrition.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fernandez says&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gs1us.org\/\">GS1 US<\/a>&nbsp;is working with stores to avoid confusion and delays at checkout.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We&#8217;re helping the retailers build the infrastructure so that they can build the system once and then be able to apply it to those specific state requirements to enable the checkout experience to be more seamless,&#8221; said Fernandez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For consumers, Fernandez urges SNAP recipients to check their state websites, like\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/healthysnap.myflfamilies.com\/\">healthysnap.myflfamilies.com<\/a>,\u00a0for specific details ahead of implementation.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April 20, changes will be happening to SNAP benefits in Florida. Soda, energy drinks, candy, and &#8216;ultra-processed prepared desserts&#8217; will soon be\u00a0excluded\u00a0from SNAP purchases, according to Healthy SNAP Florida.&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDJcL2ltYWdlcy0zLTEud2VicD9maXQ9MzAwJTJDMTY4JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiU05BUCBmb29kIHJlc3RyaWN0aW9ucyBjb21pbmcgdG8gRmxvcmlkYSIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImZvbnQiOiIiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.VUAvpMIR2mMzNmhxt7b350pViyufGp3nT73gUWyvZuUMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":62809,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/images-3-1.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[13729],"class_list":["post-62808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-snap-food-restrictions-coming-to-florida"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62810,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62808\/revisions\/62810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}