by Amanda Head
The food market has been reinvented substantially in the year since Kennedy's MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement merged with Trump's MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement in the fall of 2024.
When PepsiCo announced this week that it was cutting prices on some of its most popular brands like Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos, it offered fresh evidence of how President Donald Trump's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has created unconventional market pressures that are driving some food prices down.
A year ago, Trump's detractors insisted his administration's policies would only raise prices, But Trump and his MAHA quarterback — Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are proving them wrong.
Grocery prices increased 2.4% for the year that ended in December, according to the Labor Department. That's substantially from the Biden era, when food-at-home prices increased 24.0 percent between January 2020 and January 2023, according to the Agriculture Department.
There are some exceptions, like beef and meats that have exploded in recent months even as the Trump administration has worked to open up some imports to lessen the impact.
Nonetheless, there's little doubt the food market has been reinvented substantially in the year since Kennedy's MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement merged with Trump's MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement in the fall of 2024.
That change has included slowing the childhood vaccine schedule, removing toxic chemicals and dyes from America's foods, rethinking the way bird flu in chicken flocks was treated and reorienting the country's diet on the whole to more nutritious vegetables and fruits with sufficient protein and whole grains.
“We’ve never seen this many changes being demanded all at once,” Lynn Dornblaser, a packaged-food industry expert at the market-research firm Mintel, told The Wall Street Journal recently.
Any diet conversation in the Trump administration held over the last year inevitably included a conversation about removing processed and sugary foods from federal welfare programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
Since then, the USDA has approved state-level waivers allowing individual states to restrict or ban SNAP purchases of specific "junk food" items—primarily soda, candy, energy drinks, sugary snacks, and certain prepared desserts—starting in batches throughout 2025 and taking effect mostly on January 1 of this year, or shortly thereafter.
Thus far, 18 states (including Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, West Virginia, Colorado, and others) have implemented these targeted restrictions, aiming to curb chronic disease by shifting subsidies away from ultra-processed items toward healthier foods, though broader processed foods remain eligible in states without waivers.
General Mills has also implemented significant price cuts across about two-thirds of its North America retail portfolio—including cereals, snacks, and other processed foods—starting late last year. Company executives credited these reductions with helping flatten volume declines and drive modest growth amid consumer pushback on prior inflation-driven hikes.
Other major players like Coca-Cola, Mondelez (Oreo, Cadbury), Hershey, and Kellogg could do the same for items in their product lineup like snacks, candy, and soda, analysts predict.
Much of the pushback on implementing such health measures came from the food industry, including Big Sugar, Big Soda (e.g., American Beverage Association) and sugar/snack producers, which have ramped up lobbying against the changes, citing potential revenue losses from reduced subsidized sales of their products.
Meanwhile, the majority of states implementing SNAP restrictions on junk food (such as soda and candy) in 2025–2026 have been Republican-led. Several Democratic governors have directly opposed or blocked similar efforts through vetoes.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a 2025 bill that would have required the state to seek a USDA waiver to ban these items, stating it would diminish recipients' purchasing power and stigmatize them as a "new underclass of grocery shoppers."
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly similarly vetoed comparable legislation, arguing that SNAP changes should be uniform at the federal level to avoid a "patchwork" system and noting definitional issues in the bill that could inadvertently allow some unhealthy items while restricting others.
However, Colorado Governor Jared Polis (a Democrat) broke from this pattern by supporting and securing a waiver for soft drink restrictions in his state, praising it for promoting health.
In most other Democratic-led states (e.g., California, New York, Illinois), governors and legislators have not pursued waivers.
Amanda Head is the White House correspondent at Just The News. Follow her on X.
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/how-maha-movement-unexpectedly-lowered-food-price-inflation
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