South Carolina is about to change what its food-stamp recipients can put in the cart. Beginning August 31, 2026, candy, soft drinks, energy drinks and other sweetened beverages will no longer be eligible purchases under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the state, the result of a federal waiver the U.S. Department of Agriculture signed off on in December. The size of a household’s monthly benefit does not change; the list of what those dollars can legally buy does. That distinction sits at the center of a policy now spreading across more than twenty states.
What SNAP dollars can no longer buy in South Carolina
The restriction targets a specific slice of the grocery aisle rather than a broad “junk food” category. Under the plan, candy, regular soft drinks, energy drinks and beverages carrying five grams or more of added sugar come off the eligible list, a group that sweeps in ready-made lemonade, sweet tea and sugared coffee drinks. The South Carolina Department of Social Services has spelled out that diet and zero-sugar sodas remain allowable, along with natural fruit and vegetable juices, sports drinks and granola bars, so the line the state drew is narrower than a total sugar ban.
For a recipient, the change shows up as a split at the register. A shopper who wants a case of soda or a bag of candy alongside eligible groceries will have to cover those specific items with cash, a debit card or another form of payment, while the rest of the order still runs on the EBT card. Every SNAP-authorized retailer in the state is expected to have the newly prohibited items flagged in its system by the effective date, which means the divide takes hold everywhere at once rather than store by store.
What does not move is the dollar amount. A household approved for a given monthly benefit keeps that full allotment; the waiver only redirects it toward foods the state counts as eligible. In practice that can shift a family’s spending rather than shrink it, nudging the same benefit toward juice, milk or produce and pushing sweetened drinks into the cash column of the household budget.
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How the two-year waiver moved from request to approval
SNAP eligibility is set in federal law, so no state can rewrite the list of qualifying foods on its own. It needs the Agriculture Department to grant a demonstration waiver, the mechanism the current administration reopened to let states carve out sugary drinks and candy. South Carolina used exactly that channel, and the department’s approval of the state’s food-restriction waiver is what gives the August 31 change its legal footing.
The request did not appear overnight. Governor Henry McMaster signaled his intent over the summer of 2025 and then issued a directive in September ordering the state’s social-services agency to submit the waiver, which it formally filed on September 23. The federal sign-off followed in December, and the approval runs as a two-year demonstration, giving Washington a defined window to study whether the restriction changes purchasing patterns before deciding what comes next.
That two-year clock matters because the waiver is framed as an experiment, not a permanent rewrite of the program. The state and the department will be watching whether recipients simply shift the same spending elsewhere or actually buy differently, and the data gathered over those two years is meant to inform whether the carve-out is renewed, expanded or dropped when the term ends.
Where South Carolina fits in a contested national rollout
South Carolina is far from alone. The Agriculture Department has cleared similar food-restriction waivers in roughly two dozen states, part of a coordinated push to keep sweetened drinks and candy out of SNAP carts. Some of those states switch on their limits ahead of South Carolina and some behind it, with start dates staggered from the beginning of 2026 into 2027 and beyond, so the national map is turning over in stages rather than all at once.
The expansion has not gone unchallenged. A federal court ruling in June 2026 found the department had overstepped its authority in granting the waivers and blocked them in five states, though that decision left the other approvals, South Carolina’s among them, in force. The split outcome means the same policy is live in most participating states while its underlying legality is still being fought over in court, an unusual position for a rule that changes what millions of households can buy.
For a South Carolina shopper, the takeaway is narrower than the legal drama suggests. The benefit is intact, the eligible-food list is tighter, and the practical question at the end of August is simply which items now require a second form of payment. The larger unresolved question, whether Washington keeps the authority to draw that line at all, will be settled somewhere other than the checkout counter.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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