Eight states have already passed the dates USDA listed for limits on what food stamps can buy, and SNAP shoppers there are living under those rules now. The states are Indiana, Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Arkansas. Every one restricts a soda, soft drink or sweetened drink, and seven of the eight add candy.

Eight states and the dates they started

USDA’s food-restriction table lists each state’s implementation date. Indiana and Utah came first, on January 1, 2026. Idaho and Oklahoma followed on February 15, and Louisiana on February 18.

Texas started on April 1 and Florida on April 20. Arkansas is the newest, with a July 1 date. The table was last updated October 13, 2026, and it lists all eight with dates that are now in the past.

• Indiana, January 1, 2026: soft drinks and candy
• Utah, January 1, 2026: soft drinks
• Idaho, February 15, 2026: soda and candy
• Oklahoma, February 15, 2026: soft drinks and candy
• Louisiana, February 18, 2026: soft drinks, energy drinks and candy
• Texas, April 1, 2026: sweetened drinks and candy
• Florida, April 20, 2026: soda, energy drinks, candy and prepared desserts
• Arkansas, July 1, 2026: soda, energy drinks, fruit and vegetable drinks under 50 percent juice, other unhealthy drinks and candy

For a household on SNAP in any of these eight, the question is whether the limit is already running in its state, and the table says it is. Soda, soft drinks and sweetened drinks do not go through on an EBT card there. Anyone who has moved from one of these states to another should not carry the rule along, because each state’s row is its own.

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Which drinks each state blocks

The wording differs by state. Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Utah list soft drinks. Idaho, Florida and Arkansas say soda.

Texas lists sweetened drinks, a wider term that reaches sugared soft drinks, so the Texas row is why the headline says soda or sweetened drinks. Every other row names soda or soft drinks directly. Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas also name energy drinks. Arkansas goes furthest on drinks, adding fruit and vegetable drinks with under 50 percent natural juice and a general category of unhealthy drinks.

Candy, desserts and the rest of the list

Candy is on seven of the eight lists. Indiana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Arkansas each name it. Florida’s list is one of the longest, adding prepared desserts, which are ready-to-eat sweets from a bakery case or deli counter.

Florida’s and Arkansas’s rows show how far a list can reach. Florida adds prepared desserts to soda, energy drinks and candy, and Arkansas adds drinks with under 50 percent natural juice. Both are longer than the two-item lists in Indiana, Idaho and Oklahoma.

Utah’s row is the shortest of the eight. It restricts soft drinks and nothing else, so a shopper in Utah can still pay for candy with an EBT card. A household in any state should read its own row rather than a general summary.

What the table shows for other states

The eight are part of a table of 23 rows. Other states carry later dates, such as Kansas and Missouri on February 15, 2027, and Nevada on February 1, 2028. Four rows show a court order instead of a date.

A regular soda drinker in one of these states pays for the drinks out of pocket instead of from the EBT balance. Over a month, a few cases of soda or a weekly candy habit can add up to real cash, and the deposit itself is not larger to make up for it. The table does not say it is.

The longest-running limits are in Indiana and Utah, which started on January 1, 2026 and have been in place for nearly ten months. Arkansas has the newest, which began July 1. A shopper in Arkansas has had far less time to adjust than one in Indiana, and the list there is also the longest of the eight.

Monthly SNAP deposits are not what these rows change. They change what the card can be used for after the deposit lands. In the eight states, that has been the case since each state’s date, and the USDA table is where any further change to a row would appear.

USDA’s table gives dates and item lists. It does not report how stores in each state are handling the change, so the list says where the rules have started and not how smoothly. Households in Idaho, Texas or any of the others who want the exact wording can read the state’s own row. The open question for people in these states is whether their store applies the list the way the table describes it. USDA’s table gives the item lists and dates, and the state SNAP office is the place that handles questions about a specific purchase.

Using an EBT card in one of these eight states?

When a limit is already in force, the cost is plain: items that used to ride on the card now come out of cash. A household that also misses a renewal or a reporting date loses more than a drink or a candy bar.

The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer keeps that second set of rules in one place. It has 51 state packs and a renewal and reporting calendar, so a household in Texas, Florida or any other state can see its own dates.

Part 3 walks through the senior rules that many people miss, and Part 7 covers reporting changes and EBT problems.

Get the state-by-state SNAP packs and calendar in the Renewal Organizer →

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.