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    I’m an American relying on food stamps. This country has turned us into lab rats

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    It is 10 November, and my refrigerator is almost empty.I am, in fact, hungry as I write this. It is not that I do not have food at all; it is that I do not have the inclination to eat a can of tuna for breakfast, nor do I have the time to cook the winter squash my neighbor gave me.I am one of 41 million Americans who rely on Snap to make ends meet. When I offered to write about my experience during the government shutdown, it looked like we were not going to get any food assistance at all. And then we were. And then we weren’t.For weeks, the administration has been using our precarious survival as a bargaining block. Will they eat, or won’t they?This is what life is in Mapleton, Oregon, population 527. One white-spired church, one general store, one diner, one bar, one food bank where people line up two hours before the doors open.Roughly one in six Oregonians rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) to buy groceries, but it it worse here in the sticks. Our 22% poverty rate is double the state average, and even higher for young families: 44% of the kids in this school district live below the poverty level.I am not writing this with self pity. I do not have kids and my rent is very low, due to the generosity of friends. I understand that my version of poverty – the kind where you are down to canned tuna and raisins – is not the same as starvation. I feel fortunate to live in one of the states with a governor who has stood up to the federal government. That was heartening – especially after weeks of stress.But it still seems to me that we, America’s low-income people, have been treated like lab animals in a sick political experiment. Oh good, they’re giving us food! Oh wait, they’re not.When I say “giving us food”, it makes it sound like we do not work or do for ourselves. That is simply not true. Even with a regular allotment of Snap benefits and a handout from the food bank, it takes true ingenuity to get through the month. And while we are cooking beans from scratch, we are also working or hustling to find work.Take for instance, my cousin’s daughter Alissa, 24, who pays $1,000 a month to live in what she describes as “a roach-infested” slum in a nearby town, where it is slightly easier to find work.Her partner was a fisher but now works at a fishing supply store in order to spend more time with his family. Alissa used to be a full-time barista, but her $13.50 an hour did not make sense if it all went to daycare. She still hustles jobs in the so-called gig economy, but it is not enough. After taxes and rent, there is barely enough to cover their bills. She is reliant on Snap for their food.When I talked to her a week ago, she was stressed.“I’m really worried,” she said. “Not just about my family but the whole town. There’s not a lot of food banks to begin with and their funding was already cut earlier in the year.”The problem is that most people who get Snap benefits are like me: we were already running low on food before the end of October. We have been scrambling for weeks. And out here in rural Oregon, we make do with what is in front of us. “It’s hunting season so he’s out in his spare time,” Alissa said of her partner. They also forage for wild food.All this hunting, foraging and cooking from scratch might sound romantic, but less so when you consider she is living in a crap apartment and breaking Instacart rules by bringing her daughter on the job.“There’s too many people that simply don’t have the insight into what life is really like for the majority of us,” she said.For decades, I survived without relying on the government safety net that our tax dollars fund. But in recent years, everything has been getting harder. AI ate up most of my contract work. Competition is stiff so I cannot raise my rates – I make the same amount per hour that I did five years ago, but it has about half the buying power. I began racking up credit card debt to pay my bills.Last fall, I was awarded $250 in Snap benefits. It was not enough to survive the month. Then my Snap benefits were reduced, first because I found meager part-time work and then again for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, grocery prices soared.I quit being choosy at the food bank, and started picking up stuff I would not normally eat – AKA stockpiling food. Off-brand mac and cheese, a can of peaches. The thing about food insecurity is that you are always worrying. You are always doing mental math, figuring out how to substitute key ingredients or spruce up the pot of lentils you have been eating all week.And then there’s shame. At first, I refused to go to the food bank because I worried I would run into someone I knew. Now I realize the fallacy of that: if I run into someone at the food bank, it’s because we’re in the same boat – or they are there to help. I don’t feel shame any more. I feel solidarity and anger.I am angry there are so many of us. That I cannot make a living from hard work at a job I am good at. That I have been writing about my own food insecurity for 15 years.I am angry that I have worked so hard to get here, and I am angry for all the people who have had it worse. The furloughed workers who have not been paid. My friend Kevin who is unable to work because an insurance agency has denied him back surgery for an injury he got on the job. My friend Mel, who has been working for a hotel chain for seven years, and lost her Snap and healthcare assistance because she got a minuscule raise. All the people with toothaches they cannot treat, all of us with overdue electric bills.Every month the lines are longer at our food bank while rich people scheme ways to avoid taxes and blame us for the problems their policies create. Now it looks like some Democrats at the federal level are willing to play nice with the Republicans for political gain – at the expense of essential healthcare subsidies for the working poor and middle class? That doesn’t strike me as moral, either.I am not alone in my anger. I am part of a rising tide.“The amount of propaganda and gaslighting the government has been doing is sickening,” Alissa said. “Any amount of either is a sign of a failed system in my book. I mean truly imagine having to trick someone into agreeing with you because you knew they’d be against your policies if you were upfront.”She is part of a family group chat where they discuss health, parenting, and politics. “My Maga grandma definitely thinks I’m a dumb liberal, even though I’m not a liberal,” she said with a laugh. “What more people need to understand is it’s never me versus you, Democrat versus Republican, or Maga versus lib. It’s the people versus exploitation.”Here is your report from rural America: the stress, frustration and disgust are off the charts. Conspiracy theories swirl and some don’t sound that crazy to me. Two I heard this week: either they want to push people to rebel so they can invoke the Insurrection Act, or they want us all so broken that we do not have the energy to defend our rights, or even be there for one other.It’s hard to speak up when your teeth hurt. It’s hard to stand up when you are hungry. It’s hard to show up when you can’t afford gas. More

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      Snap workers say Trump administration is ‘using country’s poorest as pawns’

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      When Stacy Smith, a government worker, showed up to work last Monday – the first working day after food benefits lapsed, amid the ongoing federal shutdown – she found a long line outside her office door. Elderly and disabled individuals desperately wanted answers.Some had gone to buy groceries, not realizing that their usual benefits were unavailable.They quickly discovered that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) payments had been paused, after the Trump administration said it would not pay benefits because of the shutdown – crushing the largest anti-hunger program in the US.“I had a client that came in and said they were afraid they were going to have to start eating cat food again, because without Snap benefits, that’s all they can afford, because they’re on a fixed income,” said Smith, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2882, who works as an eligibility technician for assistance programs including Snap in Providence, Rhode Island.“Those are the things that I leave my job, and I go home, and that’s what I’m thinking about,” she said.Nearly 42 million Americans rely on Snap. With benefits paused for the first time in the program’s history, workers who provide assistance to Snap recipients expressed stark fears over how the move will affect low-income families and individuals. Across the country, food banks have been scrambling to keep up with surges in demand.Following two court rulings, the Trump administration said it would only provide partial funding to Snap. Funding for the program lapsed on 1 November.Snap payments continue to be contested in the courts. On Friday, the Trump administration appealed to the supreme court against a lower court’s order compelling it to make the full aid payments. Its appeal was granted, temporarily, in an emergency ruling.A Boston-based federal appeals court late on Sunday then ruled the benefits must be paid for November. But the Trump administration was expected to appeal the ruling, which was not expected to have immediate effect after the supreme court ruling, leaving the current status of the Snap program itself uncertain.As the Trump administration fights against funding Snap, Smith said low-income families were scared. With the holidays approaching and schools due to close, breakfast and lunch meals provided during term time will not be available for their children.View image in fullscreen“Clients are coming in. They want to know when this is going to end. And we don’t have an answer for them,” said Smith. “It’s hard to look someone in the face who’s telling you they can’t feed their family, and be able to try to guide them to other avenues to try to get some food for their household. We have community food banks, and we have food pantries, and they’re they’re already maxed out.”Snap is funded by the federal government, but administered by state and local governments, already facing cuts by the Trump administration. “This is more chaos for states and their ability to manage all these other big program issues that they have, and they’re throwing all their resources in,” said a former USDA food and nutrition service employee, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, as they currently work for federal contractors. “There’s a real commitment by the states to get these benefits out there. This is a lifeline for the 42 million people that get the program. I see that commitment from them, but this really is unprecedented.”As the government shutdown drags on, Snap recipients have been reaching out to state offices in desperation for answers and relief.“At this point we have no more information, really, than they have in the news currently,” said Misha Dancing Waters, a member of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 720, who also works as an economic support specialist since the last nine years in Dane county, Wisconsin. “For Wisconsin, we haven’t even gotten partial Snap funding. We haven’t gotten anything so far.View image in fullscreen“We’re giving out a lot of resources, and they’re really just hitting all of those food pantries. Places where there’s anything to help are getting hit so hard that they just really can’t meet the need.”Pausing the scheme was “really punitive”, added Waters. “It’s another way to get people off of the benefit … It’s really scary times. There’s so many things up in the air. People really don’t have any way to plan or prepare.”Contacted for comment, the US Department of Agriculture – which oversees Snap benefits – pointed to a memo, which said that “maximum allotments” for households were being reduced to 50% during November “due to the limited availability of Federal funding” and “orders from two courts”.Should the shutdown persist, and Snap funding fail to be restored, Waters expressed fear things will get worse very quickly.“I think the next month we’re going to see things get drastically more dire if we don’t get this shutdown turned around and get our situation with health insurance and food care fixed. People need those basic things just to survive,” she said. “We are using our country’s poorest and most vulnerable as pawns in a political game, and that’s not acceptable on any level. It’s not OK for us to be denying people basic things like food and medical care.” More

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      US supreme court issues emergency order blocking full Snap food aid payments

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      The supreme court has issued an emergency order temporarily blocking full Snap food aid payments.The high court’s order came after the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown.After that request to block was denied, the Trump administration turned to the supreme court in a further attempt to block the order to fully fund Snap food aid payments.The application to stay reads: “If forced to transfer funds to Snap to make full November allotments, there is no means for the government to recoup those expenditures – which is quintessential irreparable harm. Once those payments are made, there is every indication that the States will promptly disburse them. And once disbursed, the government will be un-able to recover any funds. Worse, these harms will only compound if the decision below stands.“There is every reason to expect that if the shutdown lingers, the court below will not command the government to tap these funds again in December to support Snap – blowing a bigger hole in the budget for the child nutrition programs.”The application – which was filed at about 7pm ET – also requested that the supreme court grant the “immediate administrative stay of the district court’s orders by 9.30pm” on Friday.Shortly after 9.30pm, attorney general Pam Bondi shared a note on X saying that the supreme court “just granted our administrative stay in this case. Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”US district judge John J McConnell Jr had given the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after the administration said last month that it would not pay benefits for November because of the shutdown.On Friday, Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, wrote in a memo to states that the government “will complete the processes necessary” to fully fund Snap for now and the funds will be available on Friday.But also on Friday, the Trump administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund.The court filing came even as Britt Cudaback, the spokesperson for Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, said on Friday that some Snap recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.“We’ve received confirmation that payments went through, including members reporting they can now see their balances,” she said.The court wrangling prolonged weeks of uncertainty for the food program that serves about one in eight Americans, mostly with lower incomes.Last week, in separate rulings, two judges ordered the government to pay at least part of the benefits using an emergency fund. It initially said it would cover half, but later said it would cover 65%. More

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      Snap cuts are leaving one in eight Americans hungry. Here’s how you can help

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      As the US government shutdown continues, nearly 42 million people face a threat to their food supply. Funding for the Snap program – commonly known as food stamps – expired on Saturday, leaving recipients’ fate uncertain. “It comes down to paying for my medications and my bills or buying food for myself and for my animals,” a Missouri veteran told the Guardian. A California resident described being “housebound because I need a couple of spinal cord surgeries so this is really gonna hurt me because I cannot work, and thereby earn money to put food on the table”.Last week, a judge blocked the Trump administration from suspending benefits entirely. But on Monday, the administration said it would provide those enrolled in the program with only half of what they usually receive. Now, food banks are struggling under the weight of “unprecedented demand”, said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer of Feeding America, a network of food banks across the US. “One in eight people in our country right now don’t have enough to eat, and if you’re one of the seven who does, it’s time for you to activate.”If you are directly affected by the Snap cuts, you can find a nearby food bank here. Otherwise, here’s how you can lend a hand.Donate to food programsThanks to relationships with retailers, farmers and other food industry sources, “the cost per pound for food when a food bank is sourcing it is really, really, really low,” Nageotte said. “We can provide far, far more meals’ worth of food with $1 than you could if you took that same dollar and went to the grocery store.”With that in mind, you can donate funds to larger organizations such as Feeding America or New York City’s City Harvest, or to a local site. In the US, you can find a food bank near you via Feeding America, via the website FoodFinder, or via a quick Google search for food assistance programs in your area. Another option is FindHelp.org, which identifies a huge number of aid programs, including food assistance.You can also host your own food drive. Check in with a local bank to learn what is most needed and then encourage friends, family or co-workers to donate canned goods and other non-perishable items. Or you can help at a food bank near you by volunteering.“We need donations of money. We need donations of food. We need people who can volunteer and help us sort and pack boxes so that they can quickly be distributed to neighbors who need them. And we need folks who want to lift their voice and advocate” for a reopening of the government and full Snap funding, Nageotte said.Mutual aid programs also offer support – the Mutual Aid Hub is a good place to start. Or you can contribute to local community fridges (here are some examples in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles), which provide free food for neighborhoods.Support your neighbors directlyPerhaps there’s someone in your area who needs a hand paying for food or going to the grocery store. If so, you might offer to be a “grocery buddy” who goes shopping with a neighbor, or pitches in needed funds or a gift card. The phenomenon has grown during the shutdown, with people posting in neighborhood forums and Facebook groups to volunteer, CNN reports.You might also see whether your local school has a “backpack” meal program that helps ensure kids can eat outside school hours. Or you could organize and schedule a Meal Train, building a team of people to ensure a friend is getting regular meals. And if you enjoy Italian food, neighborhood ties, or Garfield the cat, you might consider becoming a volunteer chef in a lasagne-based program aiming to build close-knit communities.View image in fullscreenA bit of inspirationFaced with neighbors in need, people across the US are taking action.In the San Francisco Bay Area, restaurants are offering free meals; a pasta maker is giving free food to anyone who uses the not-so-secret code word. A Minneapolis breakfast spot is giving out pancakes to anyone who wants them, while a museum is providing free admission to Snap recipients, among many similar efforts across the city. Outside Boston, restaurants are banding together to donate a portion of their gift card sales to a food-recovery non-profit. In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel has opened a food donation center.Others are busy contacting their representatives, demanding an end to the shutdown and the hunger crisis. Feeding America and 5Calls offer templates to help you do the same.“I’ve been in this work for over 30 years, and if there is one thing that is true when there is a crisis, it is that the best of humanity shows up in full force,” Nageotte said. More

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      Trump administration blocked from suspending Snap benefits for millions of Americans

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      Two federal judges issued back-to-back rulings on Friday in separate cases ordering the Trump administration to use contingency funds to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown.A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday afternoon blocked the Trump administration from suspending all food aid for millions of Americans, in a case brought by a group of US cities, non-profit organizations and a trade union.At almost the same time, in a separate but similar case, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the government must continue to fund the program that helps low-income households stave off food insecurity, in a case brought by the Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors who sued the administration.Without intervention, the US Department of Agriculture said it planned to suspend payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as Snap or food stamps, on Saturday, 1 November, putting millions of low-income households that rely on the benefits at risk of food insecurity and financial hardship.John McConnell, a US district judge in Providence, issued a temporary restraining order in the Rhode Island case at the behest of those plaintiffs. They had argued that the US Department of Agriculture’s suspension of Snap benefits due to kick in on Saturday was unlawful.Snap, the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, provides assistance to nearly 42 million – one in eight – low-income Americans each month. The USDA has said insufficient funds exist to pay full benefits, as issuing food stamps costs the public purse between $8.5bn and $9bn every month.The Trump administration contends the agency lacks authority to pay them until Congress passes a spending bill that will ending the enduring government shutdown which began on 1 October.The plaintiffs in the civil case being heard in Rhode Island are represented by the liberal legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The group argued that the federal government’s decision to suspend the nutritional benefits was wrong and unlawful, as the USDA still had funds available to fulfill its obligation to fund the Snap program.Such available funding includes $5.25bn in contingency funds that Congress has previously provided for the USDA to use when “necessary to carry out program operations”, the plaintiffs said.Aside from the contingency funds, the plaintiffs argued that a separate fund with about $23bn in it could also be utilized to avoid what would be an unprecedented suspension of Snap benefits.In the Massachusetts case, the US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partly pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling. That process often takes one to two weeks.The rulings are likely to face appeals.In their challenge, the Democratic-led states argued that the agriculture department has the legal authority – and available funds – to at least partly maintain the program during the shutdown.“Because of [the] USDA’s actions, Snap benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception,” the states said in their complaint. “Worse still, [the] USDA suspended Snap benefits even though, on information and belief, it has funds available to it that are sufficient to fund all, or at least a substantial portion, of November Snap benefits.”The Trump administration has maintained that the department’s contingency fund is intended for natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, not government shutdowns. The government has acknowledged that it has billions of federal dollars left, including emergency funds especially marked for Snap, but top officials have maintained they are unable to tap into those reserve funds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration warned that a court order requiring it to use emergency reserves to fund Snap would be “operationally fraught”, arguing it could take weeks to deliver benefits and might leave families with less than half their normal monthly allotment. In court filings, officials noted that such a partial payment “has never been made – and for good reason”.The argument appears to contradict the department’s lapsed-funding plan, released in late September, which stated that Congress’s “evident” intent was for Snap operations to continue during a government shutdown and pointed to “multi-year contingency funds” that could be tapped in the event the closures dragged on. The plan has been removed from the department’s website.The USDA’s website now carries a strikingly partisan notice, accusing Senate Democrats, incorrectly, of shutting down the government to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants and trans Americans. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the notice says. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”The administration’s refusal to intervene underscored a broader strategy during the shutdown, now the second-longest in US history. Throughout the impasse, Trump has selectively reprogrammed federal funds to protect priorities central to his political agenda – such as paying troops and law enforcement officers, including those involved in immigration enforcement – while allowing other programs like Snap to starve.Bracing for the loss of federal nutrition assistance, food banks and pantries, already stretched thin amid rising food prices, were bracing for a surge in demand. Officials in states such as Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Hawaii and Minnesota have announced plans to tap state and local funds to provide food aid and assist food banks in the interim.The governors of New York, Delaware, Oregon and Virginia have declared the looming crisis a state of emergency, while states set aside millions to help offset the lapse of federal benefits.“Unlike Washington Republicans, I won’t sit idly by as families struggle to put food on the table,” New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced on Thursday.In California, the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said he would deploy the California national guard under his command to support food banks and announced $80m in state support to fill the Snap gap.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Share how the ongoing US government shutdown could affect your access to food or health insurance

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      More than 40 million Americans will stop receiving food stamps on 1 November, as the US government shutdown enters its fifth week.The Department of Agriculture says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) will be suspended until Congress reopens the government. While the Trump administration argues the department does not have the legal authority to use a $5bn contingency fund to continue the aid, Democrats disagree, and two dozen states have sued the government to force the program to continue.Meanwhile, Democrats are also refusing to vote to end the shutdown because health insurance costs are set to go up dramatically as insurers prepare for a lapse in subsidies. Senate Democrats are demanding that any short-term government funding deal include an extension of the enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, while Trump and the Republicans have said they will not negotiate until the government is back up and running. Extending the subsidies would require $350bn in federal spending over the coming decade.We’d like to hear from Americans who are about to lose Snap food assistance due to the shutdown, as well as from people whose healthcare may become unaffordable due to rising premiums. Have you received any notices or paperwork that your insurance will change soon? Tell us. More

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      RFK Jr railed against ultra-processed foods. Trump’s policies encourage their production

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      As health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country’s chronic illness and obesity crises, and urged Americans to limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes and preservatives.Amid a slew of controversial and unbacked public health claims, his stance on ultra-processed foods is one of his least polarizing. More than 65% of Americans say they are in favor of reforming processed foods to remove added sugars and added dyes, according to a January Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center poll.Yet while RFK Jr touts the importance of eliminating ultra-processed foods from the US diet, nutrition experts say several of the Trump administration policies, including massive subsidies to corn and soy farms, undermine that goal.“Maha leadership is really failing on their promise to fight chronic disease, and they’re betraying the members of the public who put their trust in them to address this very real problem that Americans are really concerned about,” said Aviva Musicus, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.In September, Kennedy’s health and human services department released the “Make America Healthy Again” strategy report, billing it as a roadmap to improve children’s health. The report named highly processed foods as a leading driver behind the rising rates of chronic disease in children and outlined more than 120 recommendations, including educational campaigns to promote new, forthcoming dietary guidelines; advancing policies to restrict food dye additives; and potential revisions to nutrition information rule-making.The report has been criticized by nutrition and public health experts, however, for its focus on voluntary action over meaningful regulation of food and chemical companies. It suggests tracking Americans’ exposure to chemicals and pesticides, but does not impose any limitations on pesticide use, for example. Despite poor diet being named as a harm to children’s health, it does not suggest regulating the majority of additives in ultra-processed foods (UPFs).It instead proposes developing a government-wide definition to “support potential future research and policy activity”. The plan also recommends the exploration of “potential industry guidelines”, to limit the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Some advocates say that the report’s goals clash with the Trump administration’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), Medicaid and scientific funding, all of which are essential to public health.“When it comes to food, Maha doesn’t seem particularly interested in regulation, despite talking about the need to protect consumers from industry influence and the harms the industry is creating,” Musicus said.A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a statement to the Guardian: “The MAHA Strategy is a comprehensive plan with more than 120 initiatives designed to reverse the failed policies that have fueled America’s childhood chronic disease epidemic. It represents the most ambitious reform agenda in modern history – realigning our food and health systems, transforming education, and unleashing science to safeguard America’s children and families.”She added: “HHS is committed to serving the American people, not special interests, by delivering radical transparency and upholding gold-standard science.”Ultra-processed foods are industrially altered food products that include processed additives to improve taste, convenience and shelf life. Making up as much as 73% of the US food supply, UPFs have been linked to a number of health risks including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, digestive and microbiome issues, and adverse mental health.Many of the additives in UPFs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch, dextrose, soy lecithin and maltodextrin, are derivatives of corn and soy, two commodity crops that receive millions in agricultural subsidies. Trump’s reconciliation bill, signed into law in July, increases spending on these subsidies by $52bn over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. (Subsidy payments increased even as programs like Snap, which in 2024 provided food and nutrition assistance to 41 million Americans, faced significant cuts.)Subsidies for corn and soy “have definitely contributed”, to the proliferation of UPFs, said Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, for example, increased 1,000% between 1970 and 1990.“Our farm policy is designed for farmers to overproduce corn and soy, and encourage them to do that,” Lilliston said. Decades of huge subsidies for commodity crops led to an excess amount of corn and soy, which eventually were used to produce the additives in ultra-processed foods like corn syrup and soy lecithin, he added.“It’s hard to find a processed food, if you look at the ingredients, that doesn’t have corn and soy in there. It’s incredibly cheap – below the cost of production – there’s so much of it, and there’s access to so much of it,” Lilliston said. Today, ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the calories in the American diet, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Soy and corn – most of which is converted to animal feed, ethanol fuel, and byproducts used in UPFs – make up more than half of the country’s cropland. The farms that grow fruits and vegetables (known as specialty crops), are typically smaller and are not eligible for the majority of subsidies. But, these “are the types of farms that will be providing healthy foods, fruits, and vegetables on plates across the US”, said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group.Before joining Trump’s cabinet, RFK Jr himself blamed agricultural subsidies for America’s addiction to ultra-processed foods. In a 2024 interview, RFK Jr said the US obesity epidemic was being driven by food “poisoned” by “heavily subsidized” commodity crop derivatives. In a 2024 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy listed several steps Trump could take to “Make America Healthy Again,” and among them was reforming crop subsidies.“They make corn, soybeans and wheat artificially cheap, so those crops end up in many processed forms,” he wrote, adding: “Our subsidy program is so backward that less than 2% of farm subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.”The first Maha assessment report, released in May, blamed the food manufacturing industry for rising rates of chronic illness. After its publication, more than 250 food and agriculture groups, including the American Soybean Association and the National Corn Growers Association signed a letter claiming it included “erroneous representations” about food and agriculture and called for “formal inclusion of food and agriculture representatives in the commission’s processes moving forward”.But in the follow-up report, there was little mention of the food industry’s role in children’s health, nor were there suggested pathways to regulate what ingredients companies put in their products. While ultra-processed foods were mentioned 40 times in the initial report, the second, strategy report mentioned the term just twice.“Kennedy has framed himself as an anti-corporate hero, while at the same time utilized the age-old tactic of becoming buddies with the very industries that he purports he wants to change or regulate,” said Rebecca Wolf, the food policy lead at Food and Water Watch.“There’s anti-corporate rhetoric, but at the same time an inability and an unwillingness to actually take on corporate power,” Wolf said. “We’ve just [been] keeping a really close eye on the difference between narrative and policy, and what I’ve seen right now are policies that will not protect people, but in fact, further threaten their health.”To truly build a healthier US diet, Musicus says the Trump administration, in addition to regulating UPFs, should not be cutting the very programs that make nutritious food and healthcare more accessible to low-income families and individuals.“We’ve seen the federal government cut Snap benefits, write off millions of Americans from their health insurance coverage, slashed programs to help farmers bring local foods into schools, eviscerate government funding for research on nutrition and health and threaten access to life-saving vaccines,” Musicus said, adding that RFK Jr had simultaneously failed to impose meaningful regulation on the food industry.“As a result, the net public health impact of this administration has been negative, despite the fact that they’re constantly talking about improving Americans’ health,” she said. 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      Mocktails for Maga: why the US right is turning sober

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      Butterworth’s, an eclectically decorated restaurant in Washington DC, is an unofficial lounge of the Maga elite. A nameplate on one table declares it the official “nook” of Raheem Kassam, the former adviser to the rightwing British politician Nigel Farage and a co-owner of the restaurant. Steve Bannon is also frequently sighted holding court over Carolina gold rice – though the signature dish is bone-marrow escargot, which some young Maga politicos swear is good for your collagen.When he opened the farm-to-table brasserie in 2024, Bart Hutchins, Butterworth’s chef and one of its partners, was determined to resist what he sees as “the new puritanism” of wellness and sobriety culture. Hutchins finds non-alcoholic “mocktails” annoying on principle. “I did this edict, where I was like, ‘I’m not stocking that stuff,’” he said. “If you want to drink a glass of juice, just ask for a glass of juice; I’m not gonna pretend it’s a cocktail.”Hutchins has never felt teetotalism’s temptation, he told me, and his memory of drinks marketed as alcohol alternatives, like the near-beer O’Doul’s, was that they were “terrible”. But lately, as more Republican staffers, pundits and politicians patronize Butterworth’s antler-bedecked environs, a fifth column of non-drinkers has quietly undermined his anti-mocktail edict.It’s not just at Butterworth’s where rightwingers are drinking less. A Gallup poll in August found that the share of Americans of any political stripe who say they consume alcohol is at its lowest in nearly 90 years – though by only one percentage point. More strikingly, Republicans are the group, of the many demographic cohorts measured, that has turned most aggressively to sobriety.Gallup, which has asked Americans about their alcohol use since the 1930s, found in 2023 that 65% of Republicans said they drink alcohol – about the same as Democrats and independents. Just two years later, in 2025, that number has plunged a staggering 19 points to 46%. Democrats and independents also report drinking less, but each only by single digits. (All the results are self-reported; Gallup took participants at their word.)The decline is surprising and “statistically significant”, Lydia Saad, the director of US social research at Gallup, told me – though she has “no real hypothesis” for the sudden rise of Republican teetotalism.View image in fullscreenLaurence Whyatt, an analyst at Barclays who covers the beverage industry, “can’t explain it” either. He suspects the broader US decline in drinking may have to do with pandemic-era inflation and belt-tightening and may not last. “But there’s no obvious reason why Republicans would be drinking less,” he said. “Of course, I’m aware that some prominent Republicans don’t drink. Could that be the reason?”Yet theories abound. Perhaps this is another manifestation of the cult of personality around Donald Trump, a Diet Coke enthusiast. Maybe the rising tide of Christian nationalism has revived an old-fashioned Protestant temperance. Or perhaps red-blooded rightwingers, eager to “Make America healthy again”, are eschewing beer, barbecues and bourbon to become the sort of smoothie-drinking health nuts they might once have mocked.Prominent rightwing or right-adjacent abstainers include Trump himself, whose older brother died of alcoholism-related heart attack; Robert F Kennedy Jr (who has spoken about his own substance problems); Tucker Carlson (a recovering alcoholic); and the activist Charlie Kirk (for health reasons). JD Vance drinks, but his predecessor Mike Pence, a devout born-again Christian, did not. Joe Rogan, the podcaster and gym-bro whisperer who endorsed Trump in 2024, quit drinking this year for health reasons.“None of my core team [of colleagues] under 30 drinks,” Bannon, who hosts the podcast War Room, said in a text message.The War Room’s 24-year-old White House correspondent, Natalie Winters, does not drink for health reasons – nor wear perfume, consume seed oils or drink fluoridated tap water. Earlier this year a friend of hers told the Times of London that elective sobriety had become common and accepted in rightwing political circles. “Here you don’t second-guess,” the friend said. “In London if someone isn’t drinking, you think they have an alcohol problem. Here it’s either that, or they’re Mormon, or because they’re focused on health.”Carlson, speaking to me by phone as he returned from grouse hunting with his dogs, said he had noticed that young conservatives, particularly men, were far more health-conscious than they once were. When he came up as a journalist, he said, the milieu was awash in booze and cigarette smoke. “I’m just from a different world. When I was 25, the health question was ‘filter or non-filter?’” he said. “And I always went with non-filter.”Carlson quit drinking in 2002, after a spiral whose nadir saw him having two double screwdrivers for breakfast. He said he was surprised – but happy – to see people today, even those who are not problem drinkers, quitting or moderating their consumption. The Athletic Brewing Company’s alcohol-free beers are popular, he has noticed, and not just among “sad rehab cases like me. I think it’s normal young people.”Carlson – who has recently offered a range of unorthodox health advice including using nicotine to improve focus and testicle tanning to improve testosterone levels – says political professionals and journalists today also inhabit a 24/7 news cycle in which “there’s just, substantively, a lot more going on; the world is reshaping in front of our eyes,” he said. “I think there’s an incentive to pay attention in a way that there wasn’t before. It’s just kind of hard to imagine spending three hours away from your phone – or three hours, like, getting loaded midday.”View image in fullscreenHutchins, Butterworth’s chef, noticed when diners, including those he considered “reasonable people, and not insufferable”, kept asking for non-alcoholic options. The restaurant was gradually “brought over to the dark side”, he said, ruefully. He tested a few zero-proof drinks that he deemed respectable enough to serve beside marrow without shame.Many patrons still drink enthusiastically, and by 10pm most nights the atmosphere is “pretty bacchanalian”, he said. But Butterworth’s now offers a pre-packaged alcohol-free Negroni, verjus (a wine alternative made from unripe grapes) and non-alcoholic Guinness (“super popular”, Hutchins said).Changing health attitudes are probably a factor in the broader decline in US alcohol consumption. Recent research has cast doubt on the idea that even moderate drinking is an acceptable health risk. In January, the US surgeon general suggested that alcohol bottles should carry warnings that drinking can contribute to cancer.Malcolm Purinton, a beer historian at Northeastern University, noted that many young people learned adult socialization during Covid lockdowns, meaning their relationship with alcohol may differ from that of their parents or older siblings. People turning 21, the legal drinking age, do not necessarily see drinking as cool.“There’s always some form of rebellion between generations,” he said. Thanks to the cruel march of time, for instance, craft beer – which millennials once embraced as a sophisticated alternative to their fathers’ Miller Lites – is now itself a “dad drink”.Yet none of this explains the dramatic shift among Republicans. Nor does it explain another odd anomaly: the same Gallup poll found that Republicans, despite reporting drinking less than other groups, were less likely than Democrats or independents to say they viewed moderate drinking as dangerous.Some observers suggest the shift may have more to do with who now identifies as Republican. “Republicans made a big push in toss-up states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2024 to register more Republicans, especially among far-right Christians, Mormons and Amish,” Mark Will-Weber, the author of a book on US presidents’ drinking habits, told the Financial Times in August. “These religious groups abstain from alcohol.”Saad is not sure. Republican respondents report drinking less regardless of other factors such as religiosity, she noted. “We’re not seeing anything that would tell us, you know, ‘It’s religious Republicans,’ ‘It’s pro-Trump Republicans,’ ‘It’s Republicans paying attention to the news.’ It’s really across the board.”It’s also difficult to determine the ideological correlation with sobriety. Although rightwing parties have gained ground in many other countries in recent years, Whyatt said, those places have not typically seen the same “aggressive decline in consumption”. The phenomenon seems specific to conservative Americans.The best guess may be that Republicans have turned against alcohol for the same economic and health reasons that Americans in general have – but amplified by “Make America healthy again” politics (with its hostility to vaccines and chemicals, and its faint granola paranoia) and a self-help podcast culture popular on the right that extols wellness, discipline, and treating your body like a temple.Months before his death, Charlie Kirk spoke on his podcast about the reasons he had quit drinking. He said he had done so “four or five” years earlier to improve his sleep and general health. Sobriety was “becoming trendier”, he argued, listing Trump, Carlson, Elon Musk and the Christian pundit Dennis Prager among prominent conservatives who don’t drink – or, in Musk’s case, don’t often.“The top-performing people I’ve ever been around,” Kirk said, “are very against alcohol, against substances. They’ll tell you they perform better, think clearer, have better memory, better recall, more energy, more pace. And I [also] find that some of the people who drink the most, they’re hiding something, they’re masking something.”Most experts acknowledged that it is too soon to tell whether this new sobriety will stick. “You can tie yourself in knots trying to solve those puzzles,” said Saad, the Gallup pollster. “We’re going to just have to wait and see if this holds up next year … maybe by then we’ll see other groups catch up.”Hutchins said Butterworth’s will continue to cater to drinkers and non-drinkers, just as it caters to diners of all political persuasions. But one group of patrons, he added, seems particularly unsettled by the sight of conservatives – or anyone – succumbing to the vice of sobriety.“We have a lot of British clientele, for some reason,” he said. “As soon as some new [British] journalist or diplomat type moves to DC, they come here. And they all say: ‘Nobody drinks here. Nobody even has martinis at lunch. What is happening in this country?’” More