Once a week, a single mother and her two young children sit around a table to play a board game. Between turns, the three of them bite into a candy bar and sip a can of soda.

The mother, who is on SNAP, has a job, but has a limited income so she can’t afford to take her children on vacation or to the movie theater, said her friend Stephanie Boys, an associate professor of social work and an adjunct professor of law at Indiana University.

To that mother, Boys said game night with a little treat is how she makes memories with her children.

“They eat healthy the rest of the time, it’s just that’s their family time,” Boys said. “She is on such a limited budget that she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to afford the weekly treat.”

Her friend’s son is autistic, Boys said, so he relies on structure and always looks forward to family game night, which includes their weekly sweet treat. Boys said her friend has been stressed further because her son only takes his medicine with a sip of ginger ale.

“Having that weekly night to look forward to is very important to him. It’s going to be even more difficult than with a neurotypical kid to try to explain, ‘we’re still going to play our games, we just might not have our soda with it,’” Boys said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently signed a waiver filed by Indiana officials to remove sugary soft drinks and candy from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

“More taxpayer-funded SNAP dollars are spent on sugary drinks and candy than on fruits and vegetables. Indiana is proud to lead the way in the Make America Healthy Again agenda by making this common sense move to return the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to its intended purpose: nutrition,” said Indiana Mike Braun in a statement.

Braun’s statement claimed purchases of sugary drinks, desserts and candy exceed the combined sales of fruits and vegetables on SNAP, but data does not bear that out. A USDA study from 2016 showed soft drinks comprise around 5% of each dollar spent in SNAP and candy amounts to 2%.

The vast majority — 80% — is spent on meat, fruits, vegetables, rice, beans, eggs, dairy and prepared foods.

Children enrolled in SNAP consume 43% more sugary drinks than non-SNAP recipients with similar incomes, according to Braun’s statement. Boys and Leslie Lenkowsky, professor emeritus in public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University, said they haven’t seen that statistic in SNAP reports and aren’t sure where Braun received that information.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Indianapolis in April to roll out Braun’s Make Indiana Healthy Again initiative and stated that every governor should follow Braun’s lead.

Lenkowsky said the U.S. has had various food stamp programs that have gone through many changes in eligibility rules and restrictions over the years. Indiana’s ban on sugary drinks and candy will be hard to enforce, he said, because it will rely on merchants at stores telling customers they can’t make those purchases using SNAP.

What will likely happen, Lenkowsky said, is that people on SNAP will try to re-budget to see if they can afford soda and candy another way. If not, he said what could happen is people negotiate with their friends or neighbors that they will buy them a grocery item or two on their SNAP benefits if the other person buys them soda or candy.

While the pendulum may shift on food benefits, Lenkowsky said the bottom line is that people in poverty need support.

“People may be poor and needy, but they deserve respect,” Lenkowsky said.

Boys said she wasn’t surprised that Indiana was approved to remove sugary soft drinks and candy from SNAP because some U.S. Congressmen and women have proposed similar actions.

Arkansas filed a similar waiver to Indiana’s by banning soft drinks and candy, Nebraska filed for a waiver to ban sugary drinks and energy drinks from SNAP, and Iowa filed a waiver to ban anything that’s eligible for sales tax, which bans sugary snacks and drinks, from SNAP, Boys said.

“I think we’re going to see more and more states asking for these waivers,” Boys said.

But waivers like this don’t address food deserts or access to healthy foods, Boys said. People who use SNAP typically live closer to a convenience store than a grocery store, so there’s more access to snacks and processed foods, she said.

While convenience stores do sell some healthy items, like apples and bananas, the cost of those foods is greatly marked up compared to a grocery store, Boys said. Government officials should work toward incentivizing healthier eating in another way, she said.

Removing sugary drinks and candy from SNAP will put more of a stigma on children who live in poverty, Boys said.

For example, Boys said at her children’s school students are encouraged to bring candy on standardized test days to share with the class. Under this change, some students won’t be able to participate.

“If their friends come to school with candy and they don’t have that, it’s hard for parents to explain why they can’t buy that. Especially when you go to the grocery store and at check out there’s all this candy right in front of you,” Boys said.

akukulka@post-trib.com