The Science of What Food Insecurity Actually Does to Us

As of November 1, SNAP benefits — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that 42 million Americans rely on to buy groceries — stopped being distributed because of the ongoing federal government shutdown. WIC benefits for pregnant women, new mothers, and young children are expected to run out any day now. And here in Colorado, voters are heading to the polls today to decide on Propositions LL and MM, which would fully fund the Healthy School Meals for All program and help backfill cuts to SNAP.

Food insecurity and eating disorders are linked in ways most people don't expect. And if we're going to have productive conversations about programs like SNAP and school lunch, we need to understand what's actually at stake. So let's dig into what the research tells us.

The Counterintuitive Link Between Food Insecurity and Eating Disorders

Here's something that might short-circuit your brain the way it did mine: food insecurity — defined as limited or inconsistent access to enough nutritious food — is a significant risk factor for developing eating disorders.

The research on this is relatively new but increasingly robust. Studies published in the past few years consistently show that adults experiencing food insecurity have elevated rates of overall eating disorder pathology, binge eating, compensatory behaviors like self-induced vomiting, and diagnoses of binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. A 2025 study of adults with both food insecurity and recurrent binge eating found that participants described their binge eating as driven by fluctuating food access, mental and physical health stressors, and what researchers called "binge-promoting narratives" — essentially, internalized shame and stress around food.

Among adolescents, the relationship is similarly concerning. Research from 2023 found that teenagers experiencing food insecurity in early adolescence had significantly higher odds of developing binge eating disorder later. Another study found food insecurity was associated with eating disorder symptoms in adolescents independent of depression and anxiety. The food insecurity itself, not just the mental health consequences of poverty, was driving disordered eating.

When you experience periods of food scarcity followed by periods of access, your body and brain adapt. You become hypervigilant around food. When food is available, there's an overwhelming compulsion to eat as much as possible because you don't know when you'll have reliable access again. It's a survival response that, over time, becomes a pattern of disordered eating. And kids who grow up in this cycle are learning a chaotic relationship with food during critical developmental windows.

The cruel irony is that food insecurity can lead to both malnutrition and obesity, often in the same household. When you're stretching a budget, calorie-dense processed foods are often the most economical choice. The stress of food insecurity also triggers metabolic changes that promote fat storage. Another survival adaptation that becomes a health problem.

How Food Insecurity in Children Affects Health, Learning, and Development

The relationship between food insecurity and eating disorders is significant, but it's just one thread in a much larger web of harm.

Kids experiencing food insecurity are nearly twice as likely to be in fair or poor health compared to food-secure children, and significantly more likely to be hospitalized. They have higher rates of common illnesses: stomachaches, headaches, colds. They're at increased risk for chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes. Nutritional deficiencies can affect everything from immune function to the absorption of toxins like lead, which has profound impacts on brain development.

Multiple longitudinal studies — the kind that follow the same kids over years — show that food insecurity in early childhood predicts worse academic outcomes that persist throughout schooling. One large study tracking children from kindergarten through third grade found that kids from food-insecure households showed smaller gains in math and reading scores, even after controlling for other socioeconomic factors. Chronic hunger and the stress of food insecurity make it nearly impossible to concentrate, regulate behavior, or engage socially with peers. Food-insecure children are more likely to repeat grades, miss school, and have lower standardized test scores.

The effects aren't just academic. Food-insecure children have higher rates of behavioral problems and are less likely to get along with peers. By adolescence, they're twice as likely to have been suspended or to have seen a psychologist.

Food insecurity is strongly associated with anxiety, depression, and elevated stress in both children and adults. And parents experiencing food insecurity — often making impossible choices between feeding their kids and feeding themselves — show higher rates of parental stress and depression, which affects their ability to provide stable, supportive caregiving.

Not that we should reduce this to economics, but since that's how it gets framed in policy debates: one analysis estimated that child food insecurity costs the United States more than $160 billion annually when you account for increased healthcare costs, special education needs, and lost workforce productivity. These aren't abstractions. They're real costs we're already paying, just in less efficient and more painful ways than we would if we simply fed people adequately.

What School Lunch Research Tells Us About Universal Programs

Today, Colorado voters are deciding whether to fully fund the Healthy School Meals for All program through Propositions LL and MM. Prop LL lets the state keep revenue it already collected from limiting tax deductions on households earning $300,000 or more. Prop MM would raise an additional $95 million by further limiting those deductions, with excess funds going to support SNAP. Wherever you live, food justice is on the ballot.

Colorado's universal free meals program, launched in 2023 after voters approved Proposition FF, saw a 37% increase in free breakfasts served and a 30% increase in free lunches in its first year. About 40% of those breakfasts and 51% of those lunches went to students who didn't previously qualify for free or reduced-price meals — kids who were experiencing food insecurity but whose families made just enough that they didn't qualify, or whose families found the application process too burdensome or stigmatizing.

When you ensure kids have access to reliable, nutritious meals at school, you're not just feeding them in that moment. You're reducing the chronic stress that impairs learning. You're preventing the development of disordered eating patterns. You're giving families breathing room in their budgets. You're investing in better health outcomes that will lower healthcare costs for decades.

From a purely economic standpoint, you could means-test more stringently. But the research on stigma is clear: when free lunch is only for "poor kids," it becomes a marker of shame. Kids avoid the lunch line. Families who qualify don't apply because of paperwork burden or because they don't want their kids singled out. Universal programs eliminate that stigma. They're also administratively simpler. No complex means-testing, no application barriers, no shame built into the infrastructure.

The Part Where I Get Frustrated (But Try to Stay Hopeful)

Here's where I struggle. I genuinely believe that most people, if they understood what food insecurity does to kids — to developing brains, to the ability to learn and grow, to lifelong health — would support funding programs that address it. The data is overwhelming. The mechanisms are well-established. The return on investment, even from a cold cost-benefit analysis, is clear.

But a lot of opposition to these programs isn't really about the research. It's ideological. It's about who we think "deserves" help, about narratives of personal responsibility that ignore systemic barriers, about resentment at the idea of tax dollars going to anything that can be framed as a "handout."

That impulse — to distinguish between people who really "need" assistance and people our culture has deemed undeserving — ignores what we know about food insecurity. It doesn't always look like what we expect. A household can have an income above the poverty line and still experience food insecurity because of irregular work hours, unexpected expenses, debt, or high cost of living. Nearly 18% of Colorado households with children experienced food insecurity in 2022, and that number has likely increased since.

What the Science Says We Should Do About Food Insecurity

A few things are clear from the research.

Screen for food insecurity routinely. Healthcare providers, schools, and social services should be asking about food security as a standard part of intake — the same way they ask about other health risk factors. Research shows that eating disorder treatment providers often miss food insecurity in their patients, which affects treatment outcomes.

Support evidence-based programs. SNAP, WIC, school breakfast and lunch programs — these aren't perfect, but they demonstrably reduce food insecurity and its consequences. Recent research on SNAP benefit cuts found they're associated with increased food insecurity and worse health outcomes. When we cut these programs, we're not saving money. We're shifting costs to healthcare, education, and criminal justice systems.

Address the root causes. Food banks and meal programs are critical stopgaps, but they're band-aids on structural problems. Living wages, affordable housing, accessible healthcare — those are the things that actually prevent food insecurity in the first place.

Eliminate stigma. Universal programs like Colorado's school meals initiative work because they don't single anyone out. Research consistently shows that reducing the stigma around food assistance increases utilization and improves outcomes.

The Bottom Line on Food Insecurity and Eating Disorders

Food insecurity is not a character flaw. It's not an individual issue. It's a public health crisis with profound consequences for physical health, mental health, eating disorder risk, child development, academic achievement, and long-term economic outcomes.

The research is unambiguous: when we invest in ensuring people have consistent access to adequate food, we prevent an enormous amount of harm. We help kids learn and grow. We reduce the development of eating disorders and other mental health conditions. We improve long-term health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.

Whatever happens with these ballot measures, we need more conversations grounded in what the science actually tells us. Because the data is clear, and the stakes — for individuals, communities, and all of us collectively — couldn't be higher.

We cover the research on food, eating disorders, and diet culture on Your Diet Sucks. If this kind of evidence-based conversation is what you're here for, the Patreon community is where we go deeper.