Photo by Steven Allen Adams From left, Gov. Patrick Morrisey and West Virginia Health Right CEO Angie Settle cut the ribbon on West Virginia Health Right’s new mobile teaching kitchen Monday, joined by First Lady Denise Morrisey and Shayla Leftridge, West Virginia Health Right’s West Side CommUNITY Wellness Center site coordinator.

Photo by Steven Allen Adams
Shayla Leftridge, West Virginia Health Right’s West Side CommUNITY Wellness Center site coordinator, cooks chicken and vegetables from the Governor’s Mansion garden Monday for her bayou power bowls in a demonstration using the organization’s new mobile teaching kitchen.

CHARLESTON — Gov. Patrick Morrisey has been on a mission since March to encourage healthy living while using the levers of government to discourage use of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the purchase of soda for low-income families.

The governor and first lady Denise Morrisey were on hand Monday for a demonstration of West Virginia Health Right’s new mobile teaching kitchen at the Governor’s Mansion on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.

“As many of you know, we are several months into a bold and important mission to make West Virginia healthy again. And at the heart of this movement is a simple truth: Getting healthy involves exercise, but also starts with the food that we eat,” Morrisey said. “Every meal is a choice, and all of those choices certainly add up. That’s why talking about nutrition is not a side conversation in our health strategy — It’s the main focus.”

Staff of West Virginia Health Right served up bayou chicken power bowls from their new mobile teaching kitchen, made using fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden at the Governor’s Mansion.

“I’m very fortunate, because I’m not the one with the green thumb around here, but there are some people that do have a green thumb,” Morrisey said. “Let me tell you, they’re doing a great job with the garden. It’s so nice to have that garden that was set up many, many years ago.”

West Virginia Health Right’s mobile teaching kitchen will travel to underserved parts of the 34 counties the nonprofit serves, providing nutrition education, healthy cooking demonstrations and preventative health outreach, such as blood pressure readings, body mass index (BMI) checks and A1C/blood sugar tests.

The mobile teaching kitchen is the third mobile unit established by West Virginia Health Right, which also has a mobile dental clinic and a mobile medical clinic. The governor and the West Virginia Legislature approved $1 million in funding in the fiscal year 2026 general budget beginning in July for Health Right’s mobile programs.

West Virginia Health Right CEO Angie Settle said the goal of the mobile teaching kitchen is to make health education accessible for all.

“Food is medicine,” Settle said. “It’s not just the prescriptions that a doctor writes you in the office. It’s what you’re putting in your mouth, and we have control over that. Yes, you can do it on a budget. Yes, it can be tasteful.”

At a press conference in March alongside U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Morrisey announced his “Four Pillars of a Healthy West Virginia.” Those pillars include a ban on food dyes and additives with the passage of House Bill 2354 during this year’s legislative session, increasing access to affordable healthy food choices for West Virginians and the Mountaineer Mile challenge with Mountain Mile Trails being designated in 32 of West Virginia’s state parks.

The final pillar includes changes to the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. These changes include a formal waiver request submitted last month to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove soda as a food product that can be purchased on SNAP, the program that replaced food stamps.

“We’re tackling the root causes of poor health, and one of the biggest contributors to chronic health conditions is our broken food system,” Morrisey said.

The waiver request – obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by WV MetroNews – asks the USDA to allow the state to remove regular soda, diet soda and sugar-free soda from the list of eligible items that can be purchased using SNAP benefits.

“You can still purchase (soda), but it’s no longer an entitlement under the law,” Morrisey said. “This isn’t about judging anyone’s shopping cart or demonizing choices that people make. We all make mistakes; I’m the first one to tell you I do. But this is about ensuring taxpayer-funded programs in this country do what they’re intended to do.”

According to the waiver request, there are 146,458 households and 273,981 individual recipients receiving SNAP benefits in West Virginia.

In addition to the request to ban soda purchases with SNAP benefits, Morrisey is seeking to allow the use of SNAP benefits to purchase certain hot foods found for sale in grocery stores, such as Rotisserie chicken, lasagna, meatloaf, barbecue ribs and steamed vegetables.

“At the same time, we’re also ensuring that you can try to get some better hot food options … other forms of protein. I think that could make a big difference,” Morrisey said. “West Virginia is making changes to SNAP that will increase your options, ideally hot foods. That would be great if that gets approved.”

Morrisey is also working to increase work, job training and education requirements for future SNAP benefits. SNAP typically requires able-bodied adults without dependents between the ages of 18 and 54 to work or be in a work program for a minimum of 20 hours per week to remain eligible for SNAP beyond an initial three-month period.

“Work is good, work is noble,” Morrisey said. “Work serves a purpose, and it will be a fundamental part of our goal in this administration. That’s especially important when you’re looking at a state that has the lowest workforce participation rate in the country. It’s not acceptable, and we all need to work together.”

The state Senate passed Senate Bill 249 during the legislative session, which would have expanded the age limit for the SNAP work requirement to 59, subject to some exemptions. But that bill was never taken up in the House of Delegates.

The SNAP waiver request also appears to contemplate a cost that will be borne by retailers if the waiver is approved and the state’s 2,118 SNAP retailers have to begin updating their point-of-sale systems to ensure that banned products are not purchased with SNAP benefits. But Morrisey said Monday he believes these costs will be minor and will not be passed on to consumers.

“We don’t expect that there will be (an increase),” Morrisey said. “(The USDA) has requirements that they put in place that you include within the waiver. We think this is going to be really not very much.”