One of the more startling revelations coming out of the new administration is the $10 billion-plus spent annually to subsidize soda through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Despite being designed to promote nutrition for low-income Americans, over 10% of the $140 billion food stamp budget goes toward sugary drinks—an amount that Calley Means, senior advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calls “a weapon of mass destruction for children’s blood sugar.”
“It’s a free country. No one’s banning Coke,” said Means during a recent interview on Triggered with Donald Trump, Jr. “But we should not be subsidizing sugary drinks with government assistance. That’s a no-brainer.”
Means, a co-founder of TrueMed and co-author of Good Energy is now on the front lines of a sweeping federal health reform campaign branded MAHA—Make America Healthy Again. The initiative, supported by President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, targets systemic corruption and institutional incentives in healthcare, food, and pharmaceutical policy. The soda-SNAP issue is just one of many examples of the misalignment between public spending and public health.
Means revealed that as a young D.C. operative over 15 years ago, he witnessed firsthand how the American Beverage Association lobbied—and successfully enlisted the NAACP—to argue that removing soda from SNAP was “racist.” That argument helped preserve what has now grown into a multi-billion-dollar soda subsidy flowing from the federal government directly to the beverage giants.
But according to Means, the tide is turning. “Nobody thought this would ever change,” he said. “But because of momentum from Secretary Kennedy and President Trump, governors are now requesting waivers to remove soda from SNAP.”
While the Biden administration previously refused these waivers, the Trump Team has signaled openness. Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are encouraging states to opt out of soda subsidies, with 25 states—half the nation—already pursuing reforms. “Even the American Beverage Association’s top lobbyists are shocked. They’ve never seen a more effective grassroots uprising,” Means said.
The revolt isn’t just about soda. It’s emblematic of a larger fight against institutionalized incentives that promote sickness instead of health. “We’re subsidizing crap for kids,” said Means. “And we’re spending trillions in healthcare reacting to problems we could have prevented.”
As part of MAHA, leaders such as National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Food and Drug Administration head Dr. Marty Makary lead what Means calls “a root cause revolution.” The focus? Redirecting government funding toward foundational research, nutritional science, and basic transparency.
Dr. Bhattacharya, once ostracized for challenging COVID-era orthodoxy, is now spearheading efforts to make NIH data more transparent and focused on why Americans are getting sick. Makary is scrutinizing the FDA’s financial entanglements with pharmaceutical companies—seven of the last eight FDA commissioners took pharma jobs after leaving office—and calling for conflict-of-interest reforms.
Meanwhile, at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz is examining where its $2 trillion annual budget actually goes—a question that, shockingly, the agency itself hasn’t been able to answer in detail.
The MAHA agenda is as simple as it is ambitious: Get the data, expose the misaligned incentives, and redirect spending toward health, not sickness.
That effort also touches on skyrocketing rates of chronic disease. “We are the sickest country in the developed world,” Means warned. Autism now affects one in 20 boys. Obesity, diabetes, and even cancer rates are climbing despite massive government investment. “We spend hundreds of billions on cancer therapeutics, yet we have the highest cancer rates of any country in the world.”
Means believes that America’s food system is a key culprit. From ultra-processed ingredients to pesticides banned in other countries, the U.S. allows a cocktail of chemicals in everyday food. “This isn’t just about health,” he said. “This is about sovereignty. This is about our kids.”
As MAHA-aligned leaders meet with food industry executives, pressure is mounting to clean up school lunches, reallocate SNAP dollars to American farmers, and reform medical standards that rely heavily on psychiatric drugs and statins.
“This is a heyday for American farmers,” Means notes. “As Americans get healthier, the demand for real, whole food grown here at home will surge.” Ultimately, the battle, he says, is not just political—it’s moral.
“When one in four women is on psychiatric meds, when kids are being prescribed antidepressants as the first-line treatment for sadness, and when lobbyists are arguing that the public shouldn’t see data because they might not understand it, we have a system built on deception,” he said. And for MAHA, the first step to breaking that system is simple: Show the facts.