Food should be economically accessible
- Photini Kamvisseli Saurez
- May 28
- 3 min read
For the right to food to be realized, food should be economically accessible for all people, at all times. This means promoting the conditions needed to ensure that everyone has the resources and means to eat nutritious and culturally valued food, regardless of their circumstances. The right to food requires coordinated action at local, state, and federal levels towards the continuous improvement in living conditions for all.
We know that this is not the reality. In fact, food insecurity has become a chronic issue in the United States and has not dipped below 10% of the population for the past four decades. The most recently published data show that more than 47 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2023, which represents 13.5% of the population and includes 7.2 million children.
Food assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), are already insufficient to meet many people’s needs, and they are currently at risk of devastating cuts. High prices, low quality, and limited availability prevent access to nutritious food, especially in low-income communities where competing expenses like healthcare, housing, and transportation create additional barriers. Systemic racism disproportionately restricts access to resources, land, and opportunities for communities of color.
As a signatory of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the main treaty protecting the right to food, the United States has “an obligation to refrain… from acts that would defeat the object and the purpose of the treaty.” This means that although the U.S. does not recognize the right to food as legally enforceable at a federal level, we have committed to ensuring that we do not take steps that would move us in the wrong direction.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” (H.R. 1) making its way to Congress at the moment would make it harder for low-income households to afford the food that meets their needs. The bill includes $267 billion in spending cuts for SNAP, significantly slashing an essential program that reaches about 42 million people each year. Not only would it increase work requirements for many seeking food assistance, it would substantially restructure the program and transfer the burden of covering much of the costs of SNAP to the states. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that cuts to Medicare would mean an increase of nearly 14 million people without health insurance, leaving these households at significantly higher risk of food insecurity. The proposed changes could result in millions of people losing access to benefits, and children of those adults who cannot meet the work requirements losing access to school nutrition programs.
When the government prioritizes tax cuts for the wealthy over essential services and tax credits that enable low-income households to afford the food they need, it is an example of taking steps in the wrong direction - away from a future where the right to food is realized for everyone.
New briefing report
Today we are launching a new briefing report entitled “Food should be economically accessible for all.” In it, we explore the current situation in the United States and set out recommendations for change that were co-created with members of our Community of Practice.
Our recommendations include:
Adopt national and state-level plans to end the need for food banks, built on rights-based principles of dignity and participation from those most affected by food insecurity.
Protect workers from financial hardship by raising the minimum wage to reflect a living wage and/or establish a Universal Basic Income, improving working conditions, and ensuring gender and racial equity in the workplace.
Protect and increase public spending for food and nutrition assistance programs, such as SNAP and WIC, and eliminate punitive and unrealistic income eligibility guidelines.
Next steps
Our new “Right to Food in the United States” briefings are designed to be used by advocates working to advance the right to food at all levels - in towns, cities, and states across the country. We encourage you to read and share them widely, and to contact us with any questions or ideas for how to use them in your own work.
Visit our website to find out how you can get involved with this work.
This post is part of a “Right to Food in the United States” series, where we are launching a set of briefing reports that explore the progress the United States has made in advancing the right to food since 2020, when we underwent the most recent Universal Periodic Review (UPR) by the United Nations Human Rights Council. For more information, please see our full report submitted on behalf of more than 35 organizations to the UN in April 2025 as part of the current UPR process.
