School's Out for Summer. For Some Kids, So Is the Food.

No matter how you spin it, America has a food problem. High-fat, ultra processed foods are easy to come by—and mass marketed. Nutritious foods are often inaccessible to populations that need them most. And a huge proportion of the country is hungry. This problem is especially visible among America’s kids.

One in five kids (14 million Americans) live in food insecure homes in the U.S. This means they do not know if or when their next meal will come. The numbers in Georgia are even worse, with one in three households with children reporting low or very low food security.  

Last week’s passage of Trump’s mega bill will impact multiple safety net programs that support people who need a little extra help. This includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, which millions of Americans rely on to pay for food.

Here, Megan Winkler, PhD, assistant professor of behavioral, social, and health education sciences, talks through childhood hunger in America, how new laws will impact food insecurity, and what the rest of us can do about it.

What role do schools play in feeding hungry children?

The U.S. has been tracking food insecurity data in our country for over 20 years, and unfortunately, at least among households with kids, that rate's never fallen below 12%. Schools are where kids spend a large majority of their daily time when we're in session. So, it makes sense that we would want to be able to support children at the place where they eat one or two meals a day.

The way that our country's really stepped up to do this is to offer the National School Lunch Program, in some cases the Healthy School Meals for All, and then for eligible families with SNAP that can mean free or reduced-price meals both for breakfast and for lunch. But when kids go home, they need to have dinner, they have weekends where they're not in school, and then there is summer.

What are some ways people have helped to improve food access for children?

A good example of one of those is actually through an organization that the Emory Prevention Research Center is currently partnering with called Helping Hands Ending Hunger. It’s basically a school-based food pantry that creates bags of meals for families to take home over the weekend to support their needs. I think there's a lot of reasons why schools need to be in that space and step up. 

What would you say to someone reading this who may be surprised about America’s childhood hunger problem, but assumes food stamps already address the issue? 

We have always known that food stamps are not enough to cover a whole household's needs. It is an important addition to help offset costs for people, but it does not cover all costs. [For context,  SNAP benefits come to $292 a month for a household of one, and $975 for a four-person household. That’s about $9 a day.] 

What makes the summer more challenging is it means kids from SNAP-eligible families aren't getting those couple of meals at school to offset those costs. This is why summer's always been a really important pinch point when we think about families with low incomes who struggle to make sure they can feed their children.

Talk to me about how the passage of Trump’s mega bill will impact SNAP and child hunger. 

When Congresswoman Angie Craig of Minnesota was giving her evaluation of the bill, she summarized it as, “this will make America hungrier, poorer, and sicker.” And I think that's a perfect summary of what this bill is doing.  

The bill cut the SNAP program down dramatically, and in multiple ways. So, we will have less benefits and less people able to enroll. They’ve also changed the work requirements for SNAP. Previously, there were no work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries with dependents under age 18. They are now going to require families with a child 14 or older to meet the work requirement—80 hours every month or 20 hours a week. So now it will likely be harder for families with school-aged children to access benefits.

Another aspect relates to periodically adjusting the dollar amount of SNAP benefits based on current food costs. This bill recommends that we no longer do that.

SNAP previously existed as a federally funded program that states implemented. Now, from the bill, states will have to share the costs based on their payment error rate. What could that mean?

Many states just don't have that kind of money. I don't think we're there today, but there is a risk that some states may no longer want or be able to offer SNAP benefits at all. Probably a more likely scenario is those that can, will change the eligibility standards across states so there'll be less people eligible to participate.

Could you explain what the new SNAP food restriction waivers are that some states have chosen to implement?

In a way, this change is also unprecedented. Currently, SNAP restricts what items can be purchased with their benefits. Right now, you can’t buy alcohol, personal care items, and hot food with SNAP. But all other foods. have always been allowed.

What is being supported—and passed in six states—are these food restriction SNAP waivers, which are putting restrictions mainly on soda or sugar-sweetened beverages. Some are also doing add-on options for candy. This means, starting next year, when folks go to check out, they won't be able to pay for these items with their SNAP benefits. There are a lot of complications around something like this.

On its face, it seems like something that could help with nutrition. But the more likely scenario is it's just going to affect the distribution of which household resources get spent on which food products, since households already have to supplement their food benefits with other income.

This is also very much a paternalistic policy that limits people's choices of what they can spend their money on. In addition, I think it's placing blame on the wrong people.

It’s telling people they are wrong for liking sugar, sweets, and beverages when they’ve been marketed toward them their whole lives. If you really wanted to shape the nutritional quality of our nation, I might target the [food] industry more than targeting the individuals that consume those products.

So, the bill has passed now. Some of these changes will be coming. Where does that leave us? 

As a community at large, we are going to have to mobilize to support these families. Educators are going to be one of those in the first line position to help us do that. So, it might be thinking about how they start or expand their school’s food pantry program.

What about for legislators?

There are a lot of policy tools that we can use to help address this food security issue because food security to me is economic insecurity. Any other tool we can use to improve economic security is a tool we should use. That might be minimum wage laws. That might be thinking about being more generous with state earned income tax credits, which require that families work to be eligible. I would really encourage legislators to think more about their diverse portfolio of policies that can ultimately help these families.

What effects can food insecurity and childhood hunger have on a person's development?

The effects are huge, especially if children are hungry often. It’s everything from mental health and school performance to physical health.  We measure food insecurity as food secure households, marginally food secure, low food security, and very low food security. When we do analyses, we usually collapse the bottom two. So low and very low compared to secure and marginally secure.

But there's research that shows even marginally food secure households impact kids. So just a little bit of food insecurity can have effects for children that we really need to monitor. And especially if we're thinking about certain developmental timing among school-aged kids. There are lifelong impacts to this. We must do things differently.