Swansenreport

A nutrition policy advocate who testified before Congress this week declined to say whether sugary sodas are a good use of taxpayer dollars — and couldn’t confirm whether her organization is funded by companies that profit from food stamps.

The exchange happened Wednesday at a House Oversight Committee hearing on waste, fraud, and abuse in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Rep. Gill pressed Claudia Plata-Nino, SNAP policy director at the Food Research and Action Center, on whether taxpayer-funded benefits should cover sugary drinks.

She wouldn’t answer.

“Are you that ideologically dug in that you want our tax dollars paying for sugary sodas that you will not, in a straightforward way, admit that sugary sodas are not healthful for the American people?” Gill asked, per the committee’s published transcript.

Plata-Nino’s response: she wouldn’t answer because there’s no data proving soda is unhealthy.

Gill then asked whether FRAC is funded by organizations that profit from food stamps. Plata-Nino said she couldn’t comment.

She could have. FRAC’s own supporter page lists General Mills, Walmart, Instacart, and the Albertsons Companies Foundation among its funders — all corporations with a direct financial interest in what SNAP dollars can buy.

The hearing landed in the middle of a live legal fight over exactly that question. A federal district court ruled Monday that USDA exceeded its legal authority when it approved state waivers allowing five states — Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia — to bar SNAP participants from purchasing soda and candy. The court found USDA had no authority to rewrite the Food and Nutrition Act’s definition of “food.”

FRAC celebrated that ruling.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has approved similar waivers for 23 states in total, framing the restrictions as a MAHA initiative. Wisconsin is not currently among the states with approved waivers, but the policy fight has direct stakes here. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, cut roughly $187 billion from SNAP over ten years while linking waiver approval to access to a new rural health fund — a pressure point that affects Wisconsin’s Medicaid math.

Whether SNAP should cover soda is a legitimate policy debate. Whether the leading advocacy group defending unrestricted SNAP purchasing is being bankrolled by companies that profit from those purchases is a legitimate question. The witness didn’t want to answer either one.

Sources: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing transcript, June 25, 2026; FRAC Supporters page, frac.org; Food Research & Action Center v. Rollins ruling coverage, Grocery Dive, June 24, 2026; USDA press release, June 10, 2025; FRAC analysis of H.R. 1 SNAP cuts.