About who get Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are children under 18. This food aid helps their families buy groceries and boosts their health in many ways – both during childhood and once they’re adults.
I am a who studies how stress and nutrition affect kids’ mental and physical health during childhood, and how those effects continue once they become adults.
Researchers like me are worried that the and the President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 will make even more children experience high levels of stress and will prevent millions of kids from accessing a steady diet of nutritious food.
Food insecurity can harm kids – even before they’re born
is the technical term for when people lack consistent access to enough nutritious food.
In childhood, it’s associated with than most people, including an elevated risk of getting .
It is also tied to a . It seems counterintuitive that lower food access is associated with greater obesity risk. One explanation is that not having may lead people to eat a higher-fat, higher-sugar diet that includes food that’s cheap and filling but may cause them to gain weight.
Even can harm American kids. While the effects of brief food shortages can be hard to measure, a study on a suggests that even short-term food shortages can influence both parents and their kids for a long time.
And SNAP spending cuts, including those in what Trump called his “big beautiful bill,” are whose families were relying on SNAP to get enough to eat and are now losing their benefits.
A study by researchers from Northwestern and Princeton universities, published in 2025, followed more than 1,000 U.S. children into adulthood. It showed that food insecurity in early childhood predicted . But those researchers also found that SNAP benefits could reduce cardiovascular risks later in life for kids facing food insecurity.
Food insecurity in pregnancy is dangerous too, and . It also .
Another study published in 2025 reviewed the medical records of over 19,000 pregnant U.S. women. It found that pregnant women who experience food insecurity are more likely to , such as giving birth weeks or months before their due date, developing gestational diabetes or spending extra time in the hospital, with their baby requiring a stay in a neonatal intensive care unit.
This same study found that when pregnant women received SNAP benefits and other forms of government food assistance, they were risks tied to food insecurity.
Food insecurity harms children’s mental health
A 2021 analysis of more than 100,000 U.S. children led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Kaiser Permanente showed that when kids experienced food insecurity sometimes or often in a 12-month period, they ran a of anxiety or depression compared to kids who didn’t.
Food insecurity in childhood is also associated with more and worse . These mental health, academic and behavioral problems in childhood can put people on a path toward poorer health and fewer job opportunities later on.
Children and babies experiencing food insecurity are more likely to , including insufficient iron. A review of decades of research that I participated in found that iron deficiency during infancy and early childhood, when the brain is developing quickly, .
Other research projects I’ve taken part in have found that iron deficiency in infancy is associated with , and later on.
Food insecurity is often one of many sources of stress kids face
If a child is experiencing food insecurity, they are often dealing with other types of stress at the same time. Food insecurity is more common for children and . It’s also common for kids with .
Research from the research group I lead as well as other researchers have found that experiencing multiple sources of stress in childhood can harm , including how . These different sources of , contributing to health problems.
Parents experiencing food insecurity often get stressed out because they’re scrambling to get enough food for their children. And when they become more , and may become more likely to lose their tempers or with their kids.
In turn, when parents are stressed out, have mental health problems or develop harsh parenting styles, it’s bad for their kids.
SNAP falls short, even in normal times
To be sure, even before the , its benefits of feeding most families.
Because they food insecurity, many families with SNAP benefits needed to regularly visit food pantries and food banks – especially toward the end of the month once their benefits had been spent.
A grocer in my rural hometown in South Dakota about the effects of food insecurity on families that he regularly sees. He explained that he keeps his stores open after midnight on SNAP disbursement days. Many of his customers, he said, are in a rush to get their “first real food in days.”
, Associate Professor of Psychology,
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