Legislative Moments and Executive Decisions that Shaped U.S. Nutrition Policy in 2025

This year, Congress and the Trump administration enacted sweeping changes to federal nutrition programs that support families experiencing food insecurity, especially those who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also announced that it will stop tracking and measuring household food security, which it has done consistently for 30 years. Looking back on 2025, the federal safety net that helps Americans keep food on the table in hard times was weakened.

In its first iteration, the Food Stamp Program started in 1939 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has evolved to continue serving the food needs of low-income American households. In July 2025, Congress passed H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), and it overhauled SNAP by cutting the program’s expenses by $187 billion over 10 years. SNAP, the nation’s primary defense against hunger, currently reaches nearly 42 million Americans but will reach millions fewer in the coming years if fully enacted.

The provisions in H.R. 1 that would create stricter work requirements took effect immediately, with a 120-day grace period for states to implement these provisions. This would be achieved by changing the approval criteria for the SNAP ABAWD Work Requirement Waiver. ABAWDs are “Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents”, who typically can only receive SNAP for 3 months in a 3-year period, unless they work or volunteer for 80 hours a month. Historically, areas with unemployment rates of 10 percent or higher can apply for a waiver to make ABAWDs exempt from this work requirement. However, H.R. 1 changed these criteria and will require SNAP agencies to enforce the new work requirements, starting December 2025. Additional changes include: 

• Increasing the upper age exception to 64 years and older (from 54 years old)
• Lowering the age of dependent children where the ABAWD exception would apply from 17 years old to 14 years old 
• Removing veterans, homeless individuals, and former foster youth from the ABAWD exemption

H.R. 1 also terminated SNAP-Ed, froze future adjustments to the Thrifty Food Plan, and transferred some of the administrative and SNAP benefit costs to states. These changes are projected to significantly reduce the number of SNAP participants, despite food costs steadily increasing since 2022. Overall, the OBBBA reduces the federal government’s investment in and public commitment to domestic nutrition assistance. 

Analysts with Bread for the World and several other organizations have warned that the effects will cascade across related programs, including free and reduced-price school meals, for which many children are eligible due to their participation in programs like SNAP. Authorized SNAP retailers can also expect to experience decreases in sales as the SNAP provisions in H.R. 1 take effect. The National Grocers Association (NGA) projects a 7.4 percent decrease in SNAP sales in 2025, with more losses in years to come for independent community grocers. 

In August, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins unveiled a plan to reorganize the department, including the consolidation of seven regional Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) offices into five. The proposed restructuring would relocate or eliminate hundreds of career staff positions and alter how USDA provides technical assistance and oversight to the states, territories, and Tribal Nations that administer programs like SNAP, WIC, and school meals. Lawmakers and anti-hunger advocates like Bread have raised concerns that reducing FNS’s regional presence could weaken federal-state partnership and coordination and slow program delivery, particularly in rural and Tribal areas.

In September, the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) announced via press release it will no longer produce the Household Food Security Report, which is the nation’s most consistent and widely used measurement of hunger. It is also the most comprehensive, tracking household food access across demographics and geographies. For 30 years, USDA has produced these reports, whose data underpin legislative decisions, public policy, academic research, and more to address and understand domestic hunger and food insecurity. Ending this data series will create a major gap in understanding hunger trends and limit policymakers’ ability to assess the impact of federal nutrition programs. As of December 2025, the ERS household food security data for calendar year 2023 stands as the most recent national benchmark.

Together, these actions—the passage of H.R. 1, the USDA reorganization plan, the termination of the Household Food Security Report, and more—represent a fundamental turning point in how the federal government addresses domestic hunger and food insecurity for vulnerable families. They weaken the government’s ability to reach and support communities struggling with food insecurity and close the eyes of federal lawmakers to the realities of hunger. As 2025 draws to a close, all of those working and advocating to strengthen the nation’s food security safety net will need to monitor the impacts of these decisions and prepare for another uncertain policy year ahead. 

Sakeenah Shabazz is Deputy Director of Bread for the World’s Policy and Research Institute (PRI).

Taylor Johnson is a Domestic Policy Advisor with Bread for the World’s Policy and Research Institute (PRI).