How food assistance programs can feed families and nourish their dignity

The 2025 government shutdown^[1] drew widespread attention to how many Americans struggle to get enough food. For 43 days, the more than 42 million Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program^[2] benefits had to find other ways to stock their cupboards.

When asked how she felt about her benefits being suspended, one woman in West Virginia^[3] told a New York Times reporter, “We’re angry. Because we do count!”

Her sentiment reflects an often underappreciated fact about food. Food is not just a matter of survival. What and how you eat is also a symbol of your social status. Being unable to reliably feed your family healthy and nutritious foods in a way that aligns with your values can feel undignified. It can make people feel unseen and less important than others.

As researchers who study food inequality^[4], nutrition^[5] and food justice^[6], we have spent decades surveying and interviewing Americans about how they eat. We have witnessed firsthand how food assistance does help people meet their basic needs, but how it can also be stigmatizing and diminish their sense of dignity.

We have also studied alternatives to typical charitable food programs that, despite good intentions, tend to induce shame. We have learned that it is possible to help people put food on the table while preserving their dignity.

Dignity and food assistance

Addressing the root causes of food insecurity – what happens when people lack steady access to the food they need for a nutritious diet^[7] that’s in keeping with their preferences – is a persistent problem in the United States.

Thus, the demand for SNAP benefits^[8], which help Americans buy groceries, other government nutrition programs^[9], and food banks and food pantries^[10] rarely declines much – even when the economy is strong. Yet relying on food assistance programs does not tend to support a healthy diet^[11] and can take a toll on mental health.

As interviewers and clinicians, we have heard mothers describe the shame they feel when SNAP benefits do not cover the entire grocery bill. We have witnessed the frustration^[12] that comes with walking down a food pantry aisle lined with signs instructing hungry people to “take only 1 item!”

“The stuff looks like almost trash, but they give it to you,” one woman we interviewed said of her experience with food pantries and the like.

These kinds of stories are not uncommon. Charitable food programs receive leftover items from grocery stores, donations from community food drives and local businesses, and sometimes surplus from local farms. Food is often damaged in transport or from being handled too many times. A review of the research found that many people who use food pantries described the food as unhealthy, moldy or inedible^[13]. Being given unhealthy and unappealing food in a time of need is a double burden.

While free food may fill the stomach, it does not satisfy the desire to feel fully human and worthy of nourishment.

People who visit food banks have told researchers that they have come to expect^[14] low-quality food and few choices. When food aid is provided that way, it can leave the people it is supposed to help feeling powerless^[15] and ashamed^[16].

These indignities are compounded by the fact that people who visit food banks and food pantries routinely face suspicion and surveillance^[17] around what they buy and how they eat, intensifying the stress associated with food insecurity^[18].

In our research, we saw cashiers hovering over mothers using SNAP EBT cards^[19] in the self-checkout line. Politicians routinely suggest that SNAP is corrupt^[20], contributing to nationwide perceptions that people who rely on this program are unfairly gaming the system. One study found that more than two-thirds of the Americans people who get food assistance have been the target of hostile comments and interactions from strangers at the grocery store^[21].

Minimizing stigma

Several studies^[22] have shown that food programs do not need to sacrifice dignity to offer help. Programs that offer opportunities for people with lower incomes to receive and give back are important.

In Canada, bulk-buying food cooperatives^[23] did just that. Food assistance programs confer dignity when they make people feel good^[24]. People seeking help feel more satisfied after visiting food pantries that keep convenient hours or offer fresh produce.

SNAP has also tried to promote client dignity^[25] by ensuring that benefits are accepted in major grocery stores and distributing the funds to debit cards, allowing people to look and feel like everyday shoppers.

Yet despite these efforts social stigma persists^[26]. People who are enrolled in the SNAP program are still routinely devalued and judged for being poor^[27] in a society that assigns social value and worth based on one’s position on the economic ladder.