American Heart Association Retracts Position On Food Stamps

The American Heart Association just took a wrecking ball to its own credibility—and then, after the dust settled and the public outrage started mounting, tried to quietly glue the pieces back together. Unfortunately for them, Americans are paying attention.

Last week, during a Texas Senate hearing on a bill to restrict soda, candy, and ultra-processed junk food from being purchased with food stamps, a top lobbyist for the AHA—yes, the very group that’s been screaming for decades that sugary drinks and processed foods are killing us—got up and opposed the bill. Opposed it. You can’t make this up.

Alec Puente, their Texas-based director of government relations, stood in front of a room of lawmakers and argued against the very principles his organization claims to stand for. He warned that cutting off soda from food stamps might reduce participation in the program and said reforms should apply to everyone, not just those on welfare. That's right—he essentially claimed that if people can't buy Mountain Dew with taxpayer dollars, they might stop accepting free groceries altogether. That’s the logic.

Senator Lois Kolkhorst, who chairs the committee, was stunned. “For the American Heart Association to be against this bill—that might be the surprise of the session so far,” she said. And rightly so. Even the AHA’s own literature is packed with dire warnings about soda consumption and heart disease.

Once the backlash hit, the AHA scrambled into damage control mode. A spokesman issued a bland email claiming it was all a “miscommunication.” Except, Puente had officially registered to testify against the bill. He gave written and oral testimony. He showed up at the Capitol. That doesn’t happen by accident. It was no miscommunication—it was a full-court press from the lobbying arm of an organization that, behind the scenes, appears to be more comfortable with corporate donors than with scientific consistency.

And that’s where this all gets darker. The AHA has received millions from the same companies that profit off the obesity crisis—Pfizer, Novo Nordisk (maker of Ozempic), and yes, PepsiCo. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s publicly available information. Meanwhile, Walmart, which moves an ocean of sugary drinks every year, also opposed the bill. Do the math.

What this exposes isn’t just the rot in the American Heart Association—it’s the entire ecosystem of taxpayer-funded junk food and the lobbyists desperate to keep the gravy train rolling. The SNAP program, a $124 billion behemoth, is meant to provide nutritional assistance, not subsidize diabetes. Soda is the number one most purchased item with food stamps, and yet the federal government refuses to let states remove it—even when they ask.

Now, with the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk backing efforts to clean up federal waste, and Make America Healthy Again advocates forming a coalition, there’s a serious movement underway to end the insanity. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is signaling a green light for reform, and states like Arkansas are already stepping up.

The other side? They’re trotting out ad campaigns dripping in irony, with slogans like “Your Cart, Your Choice,” as if taxpayer-funded Pepsi is some sacred liberty. Their message is simple: don’t touch the soda subsidies, or you’re anti-American. It’s the kind of twisted logic that only a bloated bureaucracy or a desperate lobbyist could invent.