Ed Tibbetts.

Iowa is one of the most obese states in the nation.

We’re a leader in high cancer rates.

Our waterways are polluted.

We also drink too much, even as the state controls the sale of $400 million worth of booze a year. And takes a healthy cut of that money for itself.

Yet, Iowa leaders believe our population will be healthier if we make it harder for poor people to buy soda pop. Meanwhile, they shrug at the fact others guzzle it by the gallon.

Absurd?

Of course.

This absurdity became even more evident recently when U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Iowa and a handful of other states can’t stop poor families from using SNAP funds to buy soda and candy. Iowa’s restrictions on the food assistance program began in January.

Republicans are in a snit over this. Gov. Kim Reynolds huffed that, regardless of the judge’s ruling, Iowa will persist in policing the diets of certain Iowa families. A new law she signed in May says if Iowa doesn’t get a federal waiver to enact the SNAP restrictions, then it will bail out of the federal government’s summer food assistance program for low-income children.

In other words, kids, if we can’t stop you from buying a candy bar with government money, then you may have to go hungry altogether. (The last time Iowa ditched the summer program and created a state alternative, a lot fewer kids got fed. Participants also didn’t like the switch.)

But what did you expect? This is the same state Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. credited with “bold public health leadership” when he was in Iowa last month.

Kennedy clearly demonstrates this kind of leadership himself.

Since taking office last year, he’s made vaccines harder to get and more expensive. He jettisoned scientific advisors and even presided over a resurgence of the measles, a disease the U.S. eradicated in 2000.

Now, that’s bold leadership.

Kennedy had planned to crack down on Big Ag, too. For years, he’d been a leading critic of the industry, especially its use of pesticides. But he got pushback from agriculture groups and their allies, so much so that when his Make America Healthy Again report came out last year, it recommended a “status quo” approach to pesticide regulation, according to NPR.

“The current regulatory framework should be continually evaluated to ensure that chemical and other exposures do not interact together to pose a threat,” the report said.

Nothing says bold leadership like continuing to evaluate the current regulatory framework.

At least the Farm Bureau was happy. And our governor and legislative Republicans were so impressed by Kennedy they named a new law after MAHA. This is the law that puts restrictions on the SNAP program and allows for the wider distribution of the MAGA cure-all Ivermectin.

There is no doubt too many in the U.S., and Iowa, have lousy diets. Sugary drinks and high calorie foods — and alcohol abuse — make us sicker. We clearly should do better, and federal and state policies, properly applied, could help. But making it harder for poor kids to buy soda and candy seems a bit like trying to stem a flood with a teaspoon when Iowa does so many other things to promote unhealthy behaviors.

Iowa’s leaders have taken a hands-off approach to agriculture’s role in our polluted waterways. They’ve spent years ignoring our high cancer rates. We have highly permissive gun laws.

Then, there is the state’s recent move to expand alcohol sales to Iowa State University’s football and basketball venues.

Iowa has the highest rate of binge drinking in the country, according to a report in the Des Moines Register, yet we’re going to expand the sale of alcohol at — of all places — a college campus.

Naturally, there is an element of hypocrisy at work with Iowa’s SNAP crusade.

When Michelle Obama tried to make federally subsidized school lunches healthier, she was pilloried by Republicans. Iowa’s Rep. Steve King complained about the “nanny state,” and Donald Trump tried to undermine the law President Barack Obama signed in 2010 to try to accomplish this goal.

Yet, somehow, Iowa Republicans and Kennedy Jr. seek to portray themselves as the avatars for a healthier America.

Please.

The truth is, a lot of Iowa Republicans just don’t like the SNAP program, healthy or otherwise.

If they did, they would do something to improve the state’s lousy record processing SNAP applications. The USDA announced in April that Iowa ranks in the bottom 10 in the country at dealing with applications in a timely manner. Iowa’s timeliness rate fell to just shy of 65% in 2024, down from 77% the year before when it also ranked toward the bottom.

Yet, our state’s Republican leaders do nothing. They just want to cut the program. Enrollment is down by 25,000 this year, and it’s not due to a better economy. Iowa doesn’t have one of those.

Don’t think this is an accident. This is a party that claims to be “saving” Medicaid by stripping it of almost $1 trillion over the next 10 years. These cuts are putting hundreds of hospitals across the country at risk of closing, including three in Iowa. It also will lead to millions of Americans losing their health care coverage.

None of this will make Americans healthier. Nor is it intended to.

I admit, I don’t know how to make Americans healthier. But I doubt the answer is to make it harder for poor kids to buy soda pop, even as the state encourages unhealthy behavior in so many other ways. But who knows, maybe closing hospitals, ramping up liquor sales on college campuses, limiting vaccines and boosting Ivermectin use might help.

If nothing else, it is a bold strategy.

Ed Tibbetts of Davenport is a former reporter and editorial page editor for the Quad-City Times. His column is republished here through the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please consider subscribing to the collaborative at iowawriters.substack.com and the authors’ blogs to support their work.