US Hunger Tracking Impaired
Trump Cancels 'Gold Standard' Food Security Survey, Complicating US Hunger Measurement
Anonymous
The Trump administration has canceled the federal government's 30-year-old food security survey — the main tool used to track how many Americans go hungry — just as millions of people are losing food stamp benefits. The final survey, released in December 2025, found that 13.7% of U.S. households faced food insecurity in 2024, the highest level in a decade, affecting roughly 47.9 million people, including 14.1 million children. Tulsa World reported the figure capped several years of rising food hardship.
Since then, 4.7 million Americans — about 11% of all food stamp recipients — have lost their benefits under the sweeping cuts passed in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Experts warn that without the survey, no one will have a reliable way to measure whether hunger is getting worse. Crystal FitzSimons of the Food Research & Action Center said, "we are flying blind, and we don't know the impact" of the cuts. La Crosse Tribune and Buffalo News covered the growing concern among researchers.
The Survey That Tracked U.S. Hunger for 30 Years Is Gone
The U.S. Household Food Security Survey started in 1995. Every year, it asked families 18 questions about whether they had enough to eat. Researchers called it the "gold standard" for measuring hunger. Economist Craig Gundersen of Baylor University said ending it eliminated the best tool the country had for tracking food access. Channel 3000 reported the survey had run without interruption for three decades.
The USDA canceled the survey in September 2025, calling it "redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous" and its questions "entirely subjective." Harvard professor Sara Naomi Bleich pushed back, saying the report served as a "consistent national benchmark" that policymakers across both parties used to see how hunger responded to major events. Michele Ver Ploeg, a senior fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, warned the cancellation would create a clear "void in information on prevalence of food insecurity." Crossroads Today reported on the expert backlash.
OBBBA Cuts Strip Benefits From 4.7 Million Americans
The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, cut nearly $186 billion from SNAP — food stamps — over 10 years. The law expanded work requirements to adults up to age 64 and to families with children older than 13. It also stripped immediate SNAP eligibility from refugees, asylees, and domestic violence survivors, imposing a five-year wait. Madison reported on the breadth of the new restrictions.
The cuts are already hitting hard. As states roll out the new rules, 4.7 million people have lost their benefits so far. The law also eliminated the $500 million SNAP-Ed nutrition program and cut the federal share of SNAP administrative costs to states by 25%. Minnesota alone expects to cover an extra $97 million per year to manage the fallout. Roanoke and Bismarck Tribune reported on the state-level financial strain.
Critics Say Administration Is Hiding the Hunger Data on Purpose
The timing of the survey's cancellation has raised red flags. Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress said Trump canceled the survey "rather than allow it to show hunger increasing under his tenure," warning that "this follows the playbook of many non-democracies." Georgia Machell, president of the National WIC Association, called the move "a thinly veiled attempt to obscure the harms of the administration's policies." The Independent and QC Times covered the sharp criticism.
The administration disputes this framing. The USDA argues that other economic data — such as lower poverty rates and job growth — better measure American well-being. Supporters also note that SNAP spending surged 87% between 2019 and 2023 while food insecurity rates stayed nearly flat, calling the old survey misleading. But without it, experts say researchers must now rely on scattered local food bank data and state records that paint an incomplete picture. Elko Daily and Helena Air reported on the widening data gap.
The Families Most at Risk Have the Fewest Alternatives
The final 2024 survey showed that food insecurity hits some groups far harder than others. Women-led single-parent households reported food insecurity at a rate of 36.8%. For Black households, the rate was 24.4%. For Latino households, it was 20.2%. The most severe form of hunger — "very low food security," where people skip meals or go without food for full days — stood at 5.4% nationally. Wiscnews and Columbus Telegram highlighted those disparities.
These are the same communities most likely to be affected by the OBBBA's new eligibility rules. And they are the communities that will be hardest to track now that the survey is gone. FitzSimons warned that policymakers will essentially be "flying blind" at the worst possible moment — just as the biggest SNAP cuts in modern history work their way through millions of American households. Kearney Hub and Helena Air noted the stakes could not be higher for vulnerable families.
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