We must look at solutions that incentivize and make healthy choices easier, rather than police the grocery carts of our most needy neighbors.
6/26/2025 – Tulsa, OK: Hunger Free Oklahoma President/CEO Chris Bernard released a statement in response to Governor Stitt’s Executive Order 2025-13 which, in part, seeks to limit SNAP purchases:
Today, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced in an executive order that he had the Oklahoma Department of Human Services pursue federal approval to restrict the purchase of soda and candy with SNAP benefits as part of a larger set of directives to address Oklahomans’ health. While we all share the important goal of improving health outcomes for Oklahomans, this approach is misaligned with both the data and the broader needs of our communities.
Roughly one in five Oklahomans are food insecure. Research consistently shows that food insecurity is linked with poor health outcomes including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and more. This is why Hunger Free Oklahoma and our partners continue to work to increase SNAP participation amongst eligible individuals and increase access to child nutrition programs like WIC, school meals, after school meals, and summer meals. It is why we partner with Tribes to help them expand Summer EBT to more Oklahoma children when the state chose not to run the program and why we are building one of the largest and most successful SNAP nutrition incentive programs in the country. We do all of this with the goal of ensuring every Oklahoman has access to the food they need every day so they can thrive. In other words, we do it to make Oklahoma healthy.
It’s important to understand that SNAP recipients purchase food much like other Oklahomans. USDA research shows both SNAP and non-SNAP households focused their spending on a relatively small number of similar food item categories, reflecting similar food choices. Singling out low-income families for restrictions that don’t apply to anyone else is both unfair and ineffective if the goal is to improve public health.
If the goal is to make Oklahomans healthier, then Oklahoma should:
- Administer the Summer EBT program in 2026 and beyond,
- Invest more in nutrition incentives and other healthy food access programs that don’t add new levels of bureaucracy and regulation, and
- Work to increase healthy food access across rural and urban Oklahoma communities.
If we truly want to improve the health of Oklahomans, we must look at solutions that incentivize and make healthy choices easier, rather than police the grocery carts of our most needy neighbors.
We hope that the Advisory Committee formed by the Governor’s Executive Order will recognize that hunger and health are linked and we cannot have a healthy Oklahoma until no Oklahoman is hungry.
Hunger Free Oklahoma remains committed to working with all levels of government to find effective, data-driven solutions that address hunger and improve health outcomes for all Oklahomans.
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Hunger Free Oklahoma is an anti-hunger organization dedicated to improving food access for all Oklahoma. HFO leverages the power of collaboration to solve hunger in Oklahoma by improving systems, policies, and practices. Learn more at HungerFreeOK.org.
SNAP, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, is a federally funded, state-administered nutrition program. In 2024, SNAP served nearly 700,000 Oklahomans and brought back over $1.5 billion of our tax dollars to our economy.