Florida’s SNAP rolls fell by about 630,000 people, more than 22%, between July 2025 and July 2026, according to USDA data. Among those losing food benefits are more than 247,000 Florida children. Now those cuts are landing in the school cafeteria.

The changes trace back to last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which revised SNAP eligibility rules, among other provisions.

SNAP and school meals are connected. Fewer families on SNAP means fewer kids automatically qualify for free school meals. It also means fewer schools can afford to serve free meals to every student, because federal reimbursement for that is based on how many students qualify. As the Florida director of No Kid Hungry has warned, when families lose SNAP, children can lose their school meals too.

The timing could hardly be worse. Childhood obesity in the US has reached a record high: 21.1% of children and teens ages 2 to 19, according to the CDC’s most recent data. The burden falls hardest on Hispanic and Black children and on kids in low-income households: in the CDC’s 2017–2020 data, about a quarter of each group had obesity, more than double the rate among children from higher-income families. Childhood obesity often follows kids into adulthood, raising the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.

At the same time, child hunger was already rising. In 2024, 14.1 million US children lived in food-insecure households, before the SNAP cuts took effect. In Central Florida, Second Harvest Food Bank says need is higher than it was a year ago.

These are two epidemics, and they intersect. Children from low-income households are the least likely to have access to healthy food, and the most likely to have obesity. For many kids, hunger and obesity are the same problem, and a balanced school lunch addresses both.

The evidence backs this up. A 2026 research review calls school meals “among the healthiest food sources for U.S. children,” largely because they must meet federal standards that require fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and limit saturated fat, sodium and added sugars. Free meals for all students are linked to lower childhood obesity rates and less food insecurity. The benefits reach the classroom, too: it’s hard to concentrate on an empty stomach, and a review of 47 studies found free school lunch for all is mostly linked to better academic performance.

Feeding kids at school has long drawn support from both parties. The national lunch program began in 1946 as a national security measure. Support still crosses party lines in places: in 2025, Arkansas’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed a law giving every public school student free breakfast, saying it “will help ease the burden on families just trying to put food on their tables.”

Supporters of the SNAP changes say they cut waste and fraud. But a child doesn’t commit fraud by eating lunch. And the costs haven’t disappeared. They’ve shifted onto Florida parents already stretched thin, and onto school nutrition staff asked to feed the same children with less money.

The 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, and Congress isn’t expected to pass a new one until after the election. Nine states, including California, Michigan, and New York, pay to serve free breakfast and lunch to every student. Florida is not one of them.

On November 3, Floridians of every party will choose a new governor, state legislators, and members of Congress. Candidates for Congress: will you vote to restore SNAP funding, and protect the school meals that depend on it? Candidates for governor and the Legislature: will you fund school meals for every child in Florida?

We spend a lot of energy telling families to make healthier choices. But healthy kids start with fed kids. If we’re serious about child hunger and obesity, free school lunch is the simplest place to start. On November 3, vote like a child’s lunch depends on it.

Lenore Matthew is a Tampa-based community health professional focused on childhood obesity prevention and lifestyle medicine.