MAHAing America’s Coke Addiction

Related: Activist Gets Paid to Lie to Children About Nutrition for Corporate Profit

To start, Gill poses the most straightforward of all possible questions: “Should SNAP dollars be spent on sodas?”

Plata-Nino prevaricates numerous times, and again and again Gill reposes the question with slight variations.

He finally gets her to respond in the affirmative to the question “Do [SNAP recipients] need sugary sodas to survive?”

“Some of them do who do have low blood [sugar] issues, who have kidney issues,” Plata-Nino replies.

Coca-Cola for diabetes: the official policy prescription from the Food Research and Action Center!

The nonsense continues until Gill gets to the punchline: “Do organizations who profit off of food stamps fund your organization?”

It is at this very moment that Plata-Nino's testimony goes from bad to trainwreck, as she stutters and physically looks up into her head while she desperately scans her reservoir of BS talking points for a way out of the hole that she's dug herself with her absurd testimony, exposed as the industry stooge that she is, her whole career exposed as a cynical grift for the sake of multinational corporations.

“Does General Mills fund your organization?” Gill presses.

Related: Are Cheerios Chemically Castrating the American Public?

“I don’t have access to that information,” she responds. (As a senior executive at the organization, she simply doesn’t have access to its public financials.)

“I do. It’s right here. They do fund your organization… Do you think that that’s a conflict of interest?” he shoots back.

Utterly defeated, she sits in silence as the question, the answer to which is obvious, hangs in the air.

As it happens, it’s not just General Mills, which produces Totino’s pizza, Cheerios, Fruit by the Foot, and various other processed slop procurable with SNAP funds; Food Research and Action Center financial supporters run the gamut from health insurers to food retailers to pharmaceutical companies:

That last one is curious; why would a European pharmaceutical company that just so happens to manufacture a highly profitable product — the most profitable drug in American history, in fact — for treating diabetes and weight loss be interested in funding an American lobbying group that promotes the consumption of highly processed food products laden with high-fructose corn syrup?

Weird.

Anyway, at the risk of impugning the motives of foreign pharmaceutical corporations, let’s not try too hard to put those puzzle pieces together.

Related: Big Pharma Partners With NAACP to Push Public Subsidy of Weight Loss Drug

While soda purchases with SNAP benefits are not banned at the federal level yet, dozens of states have already banned soda purchases with SNAP money or have scheduled a deadline by which soda will no longer be eligible for purchase with SNAP funds.

Possibly because these products are designed to be addictive, the EBT peasants routinely throw TikTok tantrums whenever the government threatens to take away their Dr. Pepper on the grounds that it shouldn’t be subsidizing their poor dietary habits:

I am so dumbfounded right now. There are people who genuinely think that people who use EBTs don’t deserve sodas, candy, or desserts. You’re gonna tell me that my daughter doesn’t deserve a popsicle? You’re gonna tell me that I don’t deserve to get brownies? You’re gonna tell me I can’t have a f***ing Dr. Pepper with my dinner? And all I’m hearing is ‘be grateful’… Get off of your throne of entitlement and take a look around you guys. Everyone is one bad day away from being homeless or even needing government assistance. Do you guys not see how that makes you look? Your lack of empathy and understanding is outstandingly atrocious.

EBT serf is "dumbfounded" that the government no longer allows her to purchase Dr. Pepper with SNAP benefits, decries lack of "empathy" pic.twitter.com/P6kdkrHnXP

— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) July 19, 2026