For the second year in a row, nearly 2 million adults in Massachusetts either cannot afford enough to eat or worry about the source of their next meal, according to a statewide study by the Greater Boston Food Bank. That’s more than one of every three households.
But at least, said food bank president Catherine D’Amato, that number did not increase.
“The good news is that we are holding the line,” said D’Amato, whose nonprofit commissions the study annually. “Hunger is an economic issue, and our economy still is quite strong here. But of course, the bad news is that it didn’t improve, right?”
There’s a growing concern that more people will struggle to afford food as economic uncertainty sweeps the nation, amidst talks of tariffs, trade wars, and a potential recession. President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” now before Congress proposes cuts to various social safety net programs, including food stamps and school meals. And several major Boston-area food donors — including Daily Table, Freight Farms, and Boston Organics — have recently closed, forcing nonprofits and pantries to scavenge for other sources.
It all raises the prospect that more families will struggle to consistently access healthy food in the future, said Food for Free director of operations Tim Cavaretta, who was not involved in the food bank report.
”It’s hard to stay optimistic about the overall outlook of food insecurity getting better anytime soon,” he said. “We could see this affecting populations that we previously assumed were safe, middle class.”
The food bank surveyed 3,000 Massachusetts residents from November through March and 37 percent reported being “food insecure,” defined as having less food than they need to be adequately fed. That’s nearly twice the 19 percent the food bank reported in 2019. In the same time period, the share of those who say they’ve been forced to skip meals has quadrupled, from 6 to 24 percent.
Hunger is most prevalent among more vulnerable populations, including Black and Hispanic residents and LGBTQ+ people. It is most common in Western Massachusetts, Suffolk County, and Bristol County, where half of residents are food insecure.
The ever-increasing cost of food has forced Jacqui Martinez of Revere into “constant thinking and rethinking and budgeting” for herself and the 16-year-old granddaughter she raises. The 54-year-old says she is no stranger to stretching the dollar and works full time for the state Department of Mental Health, but the combination of rent, utilities, and health care costs for her diabetes and other chronic conditions is a tough burden to bear.
“Going to the grocery store with $100, you barely come out with two bags of decent food, and then you have to make the choice of whether you’re going to buy fresh spinach over canned spinach,” Martinez said. “Do I buy food, or do I pay the utility bill?”
It’s a tradeoff that thousands of people across Massachusetts face all the time.
Among hungry families in Massachusetts, some 58 percent say they face “nutrition insecurity,” a measure of access to healthy foods; eight in ten typically buy the cheapest food they can find. More than one-third struggle to pay for heat, housing, transportation, and medical needs. Most would need only $62 more each week to have enough to eat, but instead often purchasing prescriptions or seeing the dentist.
In that sense, the cost of so many hungry families ultimately lands on the state and taxpayers, said Dr. Lauren Fiechtner, director of nutrition at MassGeneral Hospital for Children.
People who report food insecurity were twice as likely to visit a hospital emergency room in the last year as nonhungry people, according to the report, and hospitalizations cost Massachusetts nearly $900 million in Medicaid costs.
“There’s this cycle of people having food insecurity, and then you have a dietary cost because you can’t afford healthy foods, and then we have the chronic conditions that come from that and very high health care costs,” Fiechtner said. “But I really believe the state can turn the corner, no matter what happens at the federal level.”
Several key federal antipoverty programs could soon be harder to access. Republicans in Congress are working to tighten eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, for instance. Doing so would save nearly $300 billion over the next decade but translate into reduced monthly benefits for millions of the poorest Americans, an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office found.
Legislators have similarly looked to expand work requirements to Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income Americans, and in April the Trump White House laid off the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating aid to many low-income households in New England.
Still, locally, there are promising signs. Households struggling with hunger are more likely to visit food banks or other community organizations for help than they were even a year ago, the study found. This year, a 22 percent jump from 2023, while SNAP usage remained steady, and the state’s school and summer meals programs continues to serve up to 73 percent of hungry households with children. The report also found that mothers in Massachusetts who are food-insecure have become more likely to breastfeed rather than turn to formula, which the report says can lend itself to improved health outcomes for babies.
The next step for the food bank, D’Amato said, is to raise more money and expand its mission, which has already grown rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a tall order as the federal support for food assistance shrinks, leaving all states to bear the burden.
“It’s going to be extremely harmful to the health of these generations to come,” she said. “You used to be able to say, I’m gonna go to Massachusetts. They have great benefits, they have health care, they have housing. Now where are you going to turn for SNAP? Every state’s going to be the same. It’s going to be difficult and uncertain and put pressure on philanthropy and the private sector.”
Diti Kohli can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @ditikohli_.
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