As the Administration fights court orders to pay out federal food assistance to 42 million people, stories of desperation abound. With luck, the shutdown will soon put an end to the untold humiliation and stress suffered by 1 in 8 Americans who have lost a critical lifeline. But this political debacle’s public health impacts will reverberate for years to come.
In particular, expect gains in unhealthy weight gain. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, lifts people out of deep poverty. According to USDA, over half of benefits go to households with gross monthly income at or below 50% of the federal poverty level. That’s about $16,000 for a family of four. And where there is poverty, there is obesity. In the U.S., states where poverty exceeded 35% had a 145% greater increase in the prevalence of obesity compared with richer states. Already, the United States leads the industrialized world in diet-related disease. The latest CDC statistics put the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults at 41.9%, and childhood obesity has “steadily increased” in recent years. Cutting off benefits to over 16 million children living in SNAP households will not help these trends.
Policies to address diet-related disease now command popular support across the political spectrum. Indeed, widespread outrage at the food industry’s excesses has scrambled political alliances and fueled the “MAHA” movement that helped Donald Trump get back in the White House. But the available evidence gives every indication that the Administration’s policies will make the nation much less healthy.
This is not to say that reforms promoted under the “MAHA” banner, like state level bans on sketchy food additives are not important. Or that burgeoning alliances between “MAHA” adjacent groups and traditional consumer and public health advocates, which have recently persuaded federal lawmakers to back off plans to preempt those state-led initiatives, are not cause for hope. But getting rid of some of the worst chemicals in ultra-processed foods, however worthwhile, will likely affect obesity rates far less than the ongoing assault on the social safety net.
And it is an assault. That may seem like hyperbole but the unprecedented suspension of SNAP benefits is not an isolated incident. Trump and congressional Republicans blame the SNAP program’s suspension, and the larger government shutdown, on “Radical Democrats.” However, they have owned other deep cuts to SNAP made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the President signed into law on July 4. That law cuts $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade, and expands work requirements for SNAP that are expected to result in 2 million Americans losing eligibility for food assistance. At the same time, the Administration has raised taxes on consumers in the form of tariffs, which have jacked up prices on staples like coffee and bananas.
Despite an enduring misperception that cutting off food aid to the poor will prevent them from overeating and gaining weight, the data tell a different story. In industrialized countries like the United States and Europe, obesity disproportionately affects the poor—the so-called “poverty–obesity paradox.” This makes sense. Healthy food costs more. Those living in poverty are more likely to live in a food desert or a food swamp, be more exposed to junk food marketing, lack access to space for physical activity, not get enough sleep, not have the time (or the know-how) to cook, and generally experience higher stress.
Recent research has particularly illuminated the connection between obesity and stress. America’s lead among the obesity rankings is overdetermined by many factors, not least of which is a food environment saturated with ultra-processed foods, and a food culture that gave the world the “drive-thru.” But we should not lose sight of the fact that obesity is a disease, and reflects many of the same unhealthy conditions that account for so many other diseases running rampant in the United States today, from substance abuse to clinical depression. There is an ever emerging area of research showing the U.S. leads the world in physical pain, a phenomenon particularly pronounced among working age Americans without a college degree, which closely tracks with rising “deaths of despair” from suicide, overdose, and alcoholism.
Unfortunately, the situation seems primed to get worse before it gets better. A new Oxfam report published on Monday highlights the excesses of a rising “American oligarchy.” According to the report, “the richest 1% of households in the United States have accumulated almost 1,000 times more wealth than the poorest 20% over the last three and a half decades.” The report shows that economic inequality is accelerating, and has already led the U.S. to have “the highest rate of relative poverty, the second highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second lowest life expectancy” among 10 peer countries.
But hopeful signs are also emerging. This past Tuesday, among a wave of Democratic victories, Colorado voters approved a tax on incomes over $300,000 to fund universal school meals. The ballot initiative flies in the face of the Project 2025 vision of school meals, promoted by the Administration’s leaders, which calls for a return to “the original purpose of school meals,” i.e. demand payment from all but the most impoverished students, even if that means enabling private companies to defraud parents with bogus fees. As it turns out, like everything else in Project 2025, the “Ebenezer Scrooge” school meals policy is incredibly unpopular.
Currently, nine states now offer universal school meals. As voters see these and other sensible policies to promote nutrition succeed, they should spread to other states, and eventually help to turn back the tide of the nation’s obesity epidemic. But policies to strengthen the social safety net, like policies to reign in the food industry, will face stiff resistance from powerful elites. Now is the time to get involved and defend the rights of all consumers to affordable, safe, nutritious, and accessible food.