Matthew Chapman is a video game designer who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lives in San Marcos, Texas. Before joining Raw Story, he wrote for Shareblue and AlterNet, specializing in election and policy coverage.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called Diet Coke "poison" -- but vowed not to try to ban its ingredients because President Donald Trump loves the beverage and consumes it daily. But that doesn't mean Republicans aren't taking cues from him and cracking down on its consumption.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "At both state and federal levels, the Kennedy-led Make America Healthy Again movement is backing efforts to prevent people from spending food-aid benefits on sugary, carbonated beverages. Now, they are gaining momentum with an administration led by a man who enjoys soda so much that he had a red button installed on his desk for a valet to bring him a Diet Coke."
In previous years, noted the report, "Liberal-leaning states including New York and Minnesota have tried in the past to strip soda from state food-aid programs, saying it would boost their nutritional impact" -- only for the Department of Agriculture to deny the requests. But now Arkansas, whose governor is former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is seeking a similar waiver, and Trump's USDA secretary is reportedly interested in approving it.
"Nobody is anti-Diet Coke, nobody is anti-soft drink," Sanders said. "I like a soft drink, too. It's whether or not the government should be paying for it."
Currently, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) prohibits the purchase of liquor, cigarettes, pet food, live animals, and more controversially, hot and pre-prepared meals, except during disaster declarations. Soda, however, is generally allowed -- another longstanding point of contention, as added sugar has been implicated in a massive range of diseases, including obesity, heart problems, and chronic inflammation. The proliferation of added sugars in not just soda but practically all processed and packaged foods has been enabled, in part, by massive taxpayer subsidies to corn farmers.
Diet sodas typically replace sugar with artificial sweeteners, which are broadly considered safe and reduce calorie intake compared to the equivalent in sugar, but inconclusive research suggests some sugar substitutes may have health risks of their own.