Healthy Snap Florida website<\/a> says the soda category includes regular, diet, and zero-sugar soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, Sprite, Diet Coke, Mr. Pibb, Coke Zero, Sprite Zero, Pepsi, 7UP, Diet Pepsi, Dr Pepper, and Canada Dry, as well as comparable store-brand versions.<\/p>\nBenefits may still be used to purchase sports drinks like Gatorade and Powerade, plain or naturally flavored sparkling waters, and beverages containing more than 50% juice or fewer than 5 grams of added sugar per serving.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandy\u201d includes products made with sugar or artificial sweeteners combined with ingredients such as chocolate, fruit, nuts, caramel or flavorings, and sold in forms like bars, drops or bite-sized pieces.<\/p>\n
Trail mix that contains candy is also not eligible for purchase.<\/p>\n
Items such as granola bars, breakfast toaster strudels, breakfast biscuits like BelVita, and toaster pastries like Pop-Tarts may still be purchased with benefits, even if they contain sweeteners or chocolate.<\/p>\n
“Ultra-processed prepared desserts” means a processed, shelf-stable, ready-to-eat, pre-packaged sweet food intended for immediate consumption without any further preparation.<\/p>\n
Freshly prepared baked goods can still be purchased with SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n
Benefit amounts will not be impacted by these changes and recipients are still able to redeem them at the same stores.<\/p>\n
SNAP recipients will also receive updates through the MyACCESS portal, text messages and program materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition, SNAP-authorized retailers will receive in-store flyers to help identify ineligible items, which will be automatically blocked from purchase with SNAP benefits at checkout.<\/p>\n
The website<\/a> says, “Florida made this change to better align SNAP with its intended purpose: providing low-income households access to a more nutritious diet to help alleviate hunger and combat malnutrition. By excluding soda, energy drinks, candy, and ultra-processed shelf-stable prepared desserts, the state is taking a proactive step to ensure SNAP benefits are used for more nourishing foods.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida’s SNAP benefits will restrict soda, energy drinks, candy, and ultra-processed desserts starting April 20 to promote nutritious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-211959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}