On March 18, federal officials published a piece promising that the Trump administration is bringing "more healthy foods" to families who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, they claim “SNAP has been taken advantage of" by businesses cheating the system, leaving millions of vulnerable Americans without healthy, nutrient-dense food options.

I'd like to offer a different account of what this moment actually looks like for everyday Americans. From where I'm sitting, at a kitchen table in Maine, this moment looks like me trying to figure out how to feed my two kids on $241 less a month than I had last year thanks to the policies of these very same officials.

I am a single mother who works in the nonprofit sector, and my 8-year-old son has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and is on the autism spectrum. When I left my unhealthy marriage, SNAP wasn’t a safety net that caught me as I fell – it was the floor to where I crashed, then was able to stand on while I rebuilt our lives. The stability provided by SNAP and other basic needs programs changed the entire trajectory of what my family's future could be. 

So when I went to renew my federal food assistance benefits at the beginning of 2026 and found that the monthly amount had dropped, without explanation, from $600 to $359, it wasn't some abstract policy in Washington that I could consider at a distance. It was a real number I had to hold in my hands and reconcile against a grocery receipt, against the cost of the week ahead and against every other calculation a parent makes when the margin between enough and not enough suddenly narrows.

One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut $187 billion from SNAP

The officials celebrating this moment want to talk about loopholes that allowed junk food to crowd out nutritious options on store shelves, and those concerns are not without merit.

But the officials aren’t mentioning that the cost of healthier food options like vegetables, fruits and non-processed foods has surged as a result of the administration’s policies concerning farming, tariffs and supply chains. 

But most important, what I'd ask them to reckon with is the $187 billion in SNAP cuts tucked last summer into what Republicans called their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but was really an ugly mega bill that made the largest reduction to the food program in its entire history.

I would ask them, what happens to real families when those cuts actually land?

These cuts don't produce healthier diets. If anything, they make families in need less healthy. They produce emptier grocery carts, impossible math at the checkout line and parents who are quietly skipping meals so their children don't have to.

Fewer SNAP users is not success, it's fewer people getting aid

The framing coming from Washington is that SNAP reform is about improving health outcomes for low-income Americans. But it’s impossible to credibly address food insecurity by making food assistance harder to access, and then point to falling enrollment numbers as proof that the problem is being solved. 

That isn't a health policy – it's a disappearing act, where the people who vanish from the rolls are recast as a success story rather than a tragic consequence.

Despite the Trump administration’s grand promises, grocery prices haven't come down, and in rural Maine, where I live, options were already limited long before any of these changes arrived. 

I would ask the officials crafting these policies to sit with the question of who was not in the room when these decisions are made. They’re missing the families driving 40 minutes each way to a grocery store and leaving with less than they planned because the math stopped working.

They're also missing the single mothers who used the stability of SNAP to get out of dangerous situations and build something better. And, finally, they're missing the kids who needed consistent meals – and received cuts instead. 

Reform that reduces access is not reform. It is reduction, and reduction, no matter how it is dressed up or announced, still takes food off children's plates.

Kasey McBlais is a nonprofit professional and single mother of two young children in rural Maine.

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