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ALBANY, Ga. \u2014 Belinda McLoyd has been thinking about peanut butter.<\/p>\n
McLoyd, 64, receives a small monthly payment through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t give you that much to work with,\u201d she said. To fit her tight budget, she eats ramen noodles \u2014 high on sodium and low on nutrition \u2014 multiple times a week.<\/p>\n
If she had more money, said McLoyd, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and heart problems, she\u2019d buy more grapes, melons, chuck roast, ground turkey, cabbage, and turnip greens. That\u2019s what she did when lawmakers nearly doubled her SNAP benefit during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
But now that a GOP-led Congress has approved $186 billion in cuts to the food assistance program through 2034, McLoyd, who worked in retail until she retired in 2016, isn\u2019t sure how she will be able to eat any healthy food if her benefits get reduced again.<\/p>\n
McLoyd said her only hope for healthy eating might be to resort to peanut butter, which she heard \u201chas everything\u201d in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get whatever I can get,\u201d said McLoyd, who uses a walker to get around her senior community in southwestern Georgia. \u201cI try to eat healthy, but some things I can\u2019t, because I don\u2019t have enough money to take care of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second Trump administration has said that healthy eating is a priority. It released a \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d report<\/a> citing poor diet as a cause of childhood illnesses and chronic diseases. And it\u2019s allowing states \u2014 including Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah \u2014 to limit purchases of unhealthy food with federal SNAP benefits for the first time in the history of the century-old anti-hunger program.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump also signed a tax and spending law on July 4 that will shift costs to states and make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP by expanding existing work requirements. The bill cuts about 20% of SNAP\u2019s budget, the deepest cut the program has faced. About 40 million people now receive SNAP payments, but 3 million of them will lose their nutrition assistance completely, and millions more will see their benefits reduced, according to an analysis of an earlier version of the bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n Researchers say SNAP cuts run counter to efforts to help<\/a> people prevent chronic illness through healthy food.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are going to have to rely on cheaper food, which we know is more likely to be processed, less healthy,\u201d said Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s, \u2018Oh, we care about health \u2014 but for the rich people,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n About 47 million people lived in households with limited or uncertain access to food in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a>. The agency\u2019s research shows that people living in food-insecure households are more likely to develop<\/a> hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.<\/p>\n The Trump administration counters that the funding cuts would not harm people who receive benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is total fearmongering,\u201d said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in an email. \u201cThe bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP for those who need it by implementing cost-sharing measures with states and commonsense work requirements<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n McLoyd and other residents in Georgia\u2019s Dougherty County, where Albany is located, already face steep barriers to accessing healthy food, from tight budgets and high rates of poverty to a lack of grocery stores and transportation, said Tiffany Terrell, who founded A Better Way Grocers in 2017 to bring fresh food to people who can\u2019t travel to a grocery store.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t More than a third of residents receive SNAP benefits in the rural, majority-Black county that W.E.B. Du Bois described as \u201cthe heart of the Black Belt\u201d and a place \u201cof curiously mingled hope and pain,\u201d where people struggled to get ahead in a land of former cotton plantations, in his 1903 book, \u201cThe Souls of Black Folk.\u201d<\/p>\n Terrell said that a healthier diet could mitigate many of the illnesses she sees in her community. In 2017, she replaced school bus seats with shelves stocked with fruits, vegetables, meats, and eggs and drove her mobile grocery store around to senior communities, public housing developments, and rural areas.<\/p>\n But cuts to food assistance will devastate the region, setting back efforts to help residents boost their diet with fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious food and tackle chronic disease, she said.<\/p>\n Terrell saw how SNAP recipients like McLoyd ate healthier when food assistance rose during the pandemic. They got eggs, instead of ramen noodles, and fresh meat and produce, instead of canned sausages.<\/p>\n Starting in 2020, SNAP recipients received extra pandemic assistance, which corresponded to a 9% decrease in people saying there was sometimes or often not enough food to eat, according to the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University<\/a>. Once those payments ended in 2023, more families had trouble purchasing enough food, according to a study published in Health Affairs<\/a> in October. Non-Hispanic Black families, in particular, saw an increase in anxiety, the study found.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that even short periods of food insecurity for kids can really significantly harm their long-term health and cognitive development,\u201d said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. Cuts to SNAP \u201cwill put a healthy diet even farther out of reach for these families.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration said it\u2019s boosting healthy eating for low-income Americans through restrictions on what they can buy with SNAP benefits. It has begun approving state requests to limit the purchase of soda and candy with SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you to the governors of Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska for their bold leadership and unwavering commitment to Make America Healthy Again,\u201d said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a press release<\/a> about the requests. \u201cI call on every governor in the nation to submit a SNAP waiver to eliminate sugary drinks \u2014 taxpayer dollars should never bankroll products that fuel the chronic disease epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n Although states have asked for such restrictions in the past, previous administrations, including the first Trump administration, never approved them.<\/p>\n Research shows that programs encouraging people to buy healthy food<\/a> are more effective than regulating what they can buy. Such limits increase stigma on families that receive benefits, are burdensome to retailers, and often difficult to implement, researchers say.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople make incredibly tough choices to survive,\u201d said Gina Plata-Nino, the deputy director of SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, and a former senior policy adviser in the Biden administration.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about soda and candy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about access.\u201d<\/p>\n Terrell said she is unsure how people will survive if their food benefits are further trimmed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are we thinking people are going to do?\u201d said Terrell of A Better Way Grocers, who also opened a bustling community market last year that sells fresh juices, smoothies, and wellness shots in downtown Albany. \u201cWe\u2019ll have people choosing between food and bills.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s true for Stephen Harrison, 22, whose monthly SNAP benefit supports him, along with his parents and younger brother. During the pandemic, he used the extra assistance to buy strawberries and grapes, but now he comes into A Better Way Grocers to buy an orange when he can.<\/p>\n Harrison, who is studying culinary arts at Albany Technical College, said his family budgets carefully to afford meals like pork chops with cornbread and collard greens, but he said that, if his benefits are cut, the family will have to resort to cheaper foods.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d buy hot dogs,\u201d he said with a shrug.<\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.dangeladvertising.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/SNAP_vs_MAHA_04-1-scaled.jpg\")
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