Laura Cooper
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies
Still to come in the happy pod. I was quite lonely because I was quite poorly. I posted, I would like to create a ladies group, a friends group, and then the numbers just kept going up and up and up.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies
I was quite lonely because I was quite poorly and I was in hospital for some time. I've got FND, which is a functional neurological disorder. It's where my brain doesn't communicate well with my body. Yeah, it's stress-related, stress-related.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies
It was about five in the afternoon. I posted, I would like to create a ladies group, a friends group. And then the numbers just kept going up and up and up. And I was just like, oh, this is real. I can't believe it is just like happening.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies
I watched them on a Wednesday evening and I just stepped back and everyone's talking and it just, it's lovely. It really is. It just made me a bit upset, but in a nice way.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies
It's been absolutely brilliant. I've met some lovely people. I struggle with anxiety. So to come tonight, it's took a lot. It's amazing. I've got a life now. I'm really happy. I've got a life now. It's brilliant.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
This has been something that has been looming on the horizon for a long time, the idea of soda being removed from Snap and what that might look like. So I think everyone is watching with great interest what happens in Arkansas to see if that could be a blueprint for other things that would happen across the country.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
And people can use it for all sorts of things, food, drinks. Things are exempt from this. For instance, you can't buy alcohol or cigarettes or pet food. But it is money that is given for low-income families to buy groceries. And it's used to buy a lot of soda.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
Drinking soda is considered to be generally less healthy than, for instance, drinking water or something like that. And I think that there is concerns around diabetes and obesity. And some governors across the country have decided that is an issue in their state. And this is something that they want to work on specifically through limiting soda in SNAP, the SNAP program.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
Is it a problem to use SNAP to buy soda? Some would say it is a problem to buy soda on SNAP, though it is authorized and you are able to do it. The issue lies in whether the government should be paying for someone to consume that.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
RFK has been very clear since before he was even, you know, in this campaign at all that he thought that Snap should not cover sugary beverages. That was something that he wanted to happen.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
It's kind of where Maha and MAGA kind of disagree because some Republicans believe in choice. They believe in, you know, well, if you have SNAP benefits, you should be able to buy what you want to buy and the government should not police what anyone can buy.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
But then, you know, Maha is in direct contrast to that saying, well, no, actually SNAP participants shouldn't be able to buy soda with their benefits.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
Even though I still drink soda, there are a lot of people who don't. You know, people are thinking about their health and they're looking for healthier options. And full sugar sodas, CSDs as we call them, carbonated soft drinks, are kind of flat on sales. They continue to happen, but they're going a bit flat. It's so funny when we say like soda companies are flat. Yeah.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's the governor there, has been pretty clear that she is interested in Amending what can be paid for by SNAP in that state. She said that there was a lot of diabetes and obesity in her state, and she thought that people using SNAP to buy things like sugary beverages or desserts or something like that, that would be a contributing factor to that.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
I recently wrote about gut pop, prebiotic soda, like Olipop and Poppy that's really getting a following. The future of soda is now, and it's called Poppy.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
All the soda companies, Keurig Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, they've all been diversifying into different things, energy drinks, milk, seltzer, all sorts of things to continue to keep people coming in.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
The man is a huge Diet Coke fan. He even has a button for people to bring it to him throughout the day. So that's also part of the interesting thing here.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
So the American Beverage Association, which is a trade group that represents Dr. Pepper, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, they have commissioned polling that showed that nearly 60% of the people who voted for Trump last year support allowing soda purchases with food aid. So that is something that I think that they're trying to make clear. And I also think they are trying to appeal to Trump himself.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
He's a big soda drinker, you know. I think that they're trying to appeal to Trump with polling.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
The soda companies are working really hard to remind people of the zero and low sugar options that they offer to continue to keep their consumers coming back. And they would say that they are creating options for other people to meet them where they are. If you want a full sugar Pepsi, go for it. If you want diet Coke, that's available to you too.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
And if there's one thing I've learned on this beat, it is that Americans love their diet Coke. They love their Coke Zero, their Pepsi Zero Sugar. And they say it tastes just like the original.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
It would mean that SNAP recipients could not buy soda with their benefits. It would mean if you usually buy Coke, you could not. If you usually buy Dr. Pepper, you could not. I think that there are a lot of places in the country where fresh food and different kinds of drinks are not available. And, you know, this is something that people generally buy to feed their families.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
You know, for instance, we have some lawmakers talking about Arkansas and how it would be great to be able to buy more nutritious foods. But sometimes that's not what's available to people across the country.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
And I'm very curious to see, does that mean diet Dr. Pepper? Does that mean zero Coke? What does that mean? We've spoken to a lot of grocery stores as well, small mom and pop, and it just seems like it's also going to be hard at the checkout counter for people. Because right now, if you have Snap, they know you can't buy alcohol, cigarettes, certain things.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
But for so long, people have been able to buy soda. So it's also going to be a little bit... of a bottleneck at the actual checkout.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
Honestly, I think we'll see more of them from other states, also states that maybe previously had tried to do something with soda. New York was one. So I think we will see also some not Republican states. I mean, Arkansas is pretty deep red, but I think we'll see other states kind of want to do this as well.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
I would say they're concerned and they're watching with great interest. That being said, again, they've been here before on many different other paths that haven't gone anywhere. But I do think this is probably the closest we've ever gotten, especially with the buy-in from the executive branch. And I think that that's also been a big thing for everybody to think about.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
So do you think you'll be grabbing a soda with your lunch after this? You know, I have a reusable water bottle that I always fill.
The Journal.
The Fight to Kick Soda Out of Food Stamps
I'll be sticking to water. Nice, neutral water.