Grocery stores are about to get worse

[marmar]

Grocery stores are about to get worse
Supermarkets face new SNAP restrictions from Republicans — and everyone might pay the price at checkout

By Ashlie D. Stevens
Senior Food Editor
Published January 3, 2026 12:00PM (EST)


(Salon) Imagine this: The cheerful, if slightly scolding voices of the self-checkout machines punctuate the steady hum of fluorescent lights. Please place the item in the bagging area. The messages ricochet across an Iowa grocery store, a kind of ambient chorus while, at one of the few remaining manned checkout lines, a cashier squints at his screen. He punches in a code. The monitor responds with a short, unmistakable drone — the kind that needs no translation: No.

....(snip)....

The moment is ordinary enough to pass unnoticed, except that it is about to become far more common: in grocery stores across Iowa and, as new federal waivers take effect, in at least 18 states rolling out SNAP purchasing restrictions throughout 2026. Under the current administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved state requests to limit which foods can be purchased with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

It’s a move presented as a matter of public health, but one that both food security experts and supermarket industry leaders predict will shift the burden — and the cost — of enforcement onto grocery store workers, retailers and, ultimately, everyone waiting in line.

....(snip)....

Five states — Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah and West Virginia — implemented their restrictions on Jan. 1, with Iowa rolling out the most restrictive SNAP purchasing rules in the country, tying food eligibility to the state’s complex sales-tax code (thereby turning, as the Food Research and Action Council put it in a recent email, “grocery checkouts into bureaucratic minefields”). ................................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/03/snap-restrictions-soda-candy-grocery-stores/

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1. That's not quite how it works

Everything will scan but at the end the card holder will have to cough up cash (or payment plastic) for whatever SNAP denies.