Now, SNAP’s formula has been updated to address these shortfalls. As a consequence, benefits have risen by 21 percent, or an average of $36 per person per month. This change promises to boost food security and health, SNAP’s top two goals. It also has the potential to yield another, less discussed dividend: improved mental health.

Research consistently finds connections between food insecurity and poor mental health, including depressive symptoms, anxiety, hopelessness, and distress. I have observed this link firsthand. As I wrapped up high school and moved away for college, my father was left debilitated and jobless by a routine infection gone rogue. When his income dissolved and hard-earned savings ran dry, he began to fret over food. Away for college, I didn’t live through this food scarcity every day. But on visits home, I too faced an empty refrigerator, and I saw a kind and caring person reduced by the inability to satisfy one of our most basic needs—to feed ourselves and the ones we love.

This experience, in part, motivated me to research how parents decide what to feed their children in families, rich and poor. For nearly four years, I crisscrossed the Boston area talking with mothers about their feeding priorities and their food realities. I tagged along as they shopped for groceries. And in the process, I saw families’ lives up close. As I watched poor mothers take their first bite of food for the day well past noon and remove food from the checkout conveyor belt because they came up short, it became clear that food insecurity not only affects what people eat; it also takes a psychic toll.

Food insecurity—by its very definition—breeds anxiety and stress. Ninety percent of food-insecure Americans report worrying that food in the house will run out before there is money for more. The parents I talked to were no different. Some lost sleep—or their appetites—fretting about food. Faced with cavernous cupboards, others felt lonely and depressed. Parents bore the double strain of trying to make things seem okay. Some admitted to breaking into tears while their children slept. Others spoke of running their faucets to drown out their midday sobs while fending off their children’s innocent inquiries about why mommy was taking a shower again.

The emotional toll of food insecurity is about more than material deprivation. It’s about social exclusion, too. Experts argue that in wealthy nations like ours, poverty is best defined as the inability to afford a typical standard of living. Unwillingly deviating from the norm sends a message that one stands outside society, corroding one’s self-regard and their mental health in turn.

Like 80 percent of food-insecure Americans, the families I met couldn’t always afford balanced meals. Balance might seem like a purely nutritional issue. But eating cupboard-remnant hodgepodge means defying widely-shared definitions of a “proper” meal. Straying from the norm to keep everyone fed made many of the parents I spoke to feel like outsiders, adding emotional insult to poverty’s economic injury. As one mother said, bemoaning her son’s breakfast of leftover pork chops with mac and cheese, “I’d rather get my kids waffles or pancakes, the little things they used to do. Honestly, those are the little things I do cry about.”

Food is also deeply intertwined with the rituals and rites of social life, setting special occasions apart from the mundane. Drippy popsicles welcome summer, hot cider augers autumn, and candle-topped cakes say, “We’re so glad you were born.” Food makes experience fuller. But for struggling parents, trying to afford food beyond the basics often spawned anxiety. While most families tracked down holiday sweets and special treats, doing so often came at a cost: many could not afford to have their cake and eat kale, too.