No need to make separate purchases or separate food items out. Hasn’t been since EBT cards came out.
I remeber being a new parent, just out of the service; working my butt of to make ends just barley meet. Went to Walmart Hypermart and ended up behind a lady with 2 carts, a fur coat and jewelry. One cart was loaded with food and the other cart was loaded with consumer goods. The cashier rung up the food cart, telling her Food Stamps wouldn't pay for certain items. She takes them out and places them in the 2nd cart. She them proceeds to pay for a cart of food with a wad of food stamps. The cashier then rings up the 2nd cart, which came to several $100s. She pulls out a wad of cash and peels 3 $100 bills of and hands them over. I was in shock, and my wife was almost in tears, because of the struggles we went through to pay our bills and put food on the table. On that day I knew with 100% certainty that the system is corrupt and nothing more than largesse for the politicians to buy votes. For every person that could possibly "need" the help that are 10s of 10s that are abusing the system with the willing nod of politicians.
My stepson worked for a local chain a few years ago...and he absolutely had to ring them up as two separate purchases. And he would come home with stories about arguments he had gotten into with customers about what qualified...there is some nuance in the definition of a ‘prepared food’ that can be argued. I think this may be because in our state there was a criminal investigation into a chain of stores that was ringing up the wrong stuff as eligible. So, my stepson’s chain did not purely rely on their barcode system - they also made the cashier police it. Or, maybe the chain didn’t have the ability/software to segregate goods in the barcode system.
And I’ve absolutely seen the sorting of goods on the belt at Wal Mart, very recently. Maybe its old habit - I don’t know, but I still see it quite often. A lot of times there is more than one person, and there seems to be some gymnastics between them, paying for different things - so maybe this causes the sorting...but it definitely still happens. I notice, because it slows everything down, while I wait in line.