People are just realising what's actually inside of a Jammie Dodger biscuit
The iconic biscuits, with little hearts on the top, are owned by Fox's Burton's Companies (FBC), which also owns Maryland cookies, Party Rings, Wagon Wheels and Rocky.
And while they've been made and sold in the UK since 1960, some people – myself included – are only just learning what's really inside a Jammie Dodger and spoiler alert: it's not quite what it seems.
It turns out that ordinary Jammie Dodgers actually contain apple jam, which is flavoured with raspberry. Not raspberry jam.
And this is the case for all of the products in the Jammie Dodger range. If you buy a packet of the Really Fruity Strawberry Jammie Dodgers, it's the same thing, with strawberry flavoured shortcake biscuits and strawberry flavoured apple jam inside.
Even in the apple and blackcurrant flavoured ones, the apple jam is flavoured with apple and blackcurrant.
This isn't something the brand is trying to hide though, as the product packaging clearly states this is the case on the back.
Interestingly, on the front it says they have a 'new fruitier jam' and this is perhaps because historically the jam was made with a different fruit – plums.
In her book, The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence, food historian Lizzie Collingham claims this is because plums were cheaper to use than raspberries.
But it's not just the biscuit tin where you'll find this unexpected filling – it's also used in jam doughnuts from Greggs.
Yep, the bakery chain's classic jam doughnut contains an 'apple and raspberry jam filling', as does the Pink Jammie Doughnut.
However, the brand's Jammy Heart Biscuit is only listed as containing a raspberry jam filling on the website.
Many jam doughnuts you can buy from the supermarket or bakeries may also contain an apple filling with added flavourings. It's thought this is because apples are cheaper, naturally sweet and when turned into a sauce or paste, have a smooth, jammy texture that's easier to work with.
On social media, dozens of people also recently discovered the food industry's little-known jam secret and it's blowing their minds.
'Every day is a school day,' posted the Very British Problems Facebook page, to which Stuart Oh said: 'Something like this makes one question everything they know and makes their world crash around them.'
Similarly, Kayla Margaret replied: 'Well I am flabbergasted. I always thought it was strawberry jam. Good lord.'
And Katrina Devriese proclaimed: 'Wait…what???' As Posy Maynard wrote that she'd found this discovery 'most distressing'.
Others who already knew about the jam shared their own thoughts on why apples were used and other sneaky products you might find it in.
Abigail Farenden commented: 'Most bakeries that do something like a victoria sponge, or jam turnover, or a cream and jam donut, if they don't specify a flavour of jam, they'll have what my catering school bought called 'red jam'. It was primarily apples, for the cheap pectin and bulk, and then it had all sorts of random red fruits and berries in it. Currant, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, cherry, plum. I actually prefer it over pure strawberry, which I find too sickly. I'd rather a better quality raspberry, but it was ok.' More Trending
While Phil Dibbs revealed: 'Apples are a cheap base bulk product for jam. Really cheap jam from Eastern Europe uses carrots for the same reason.'
Jay Bee also claimed that some jams contain turnips, adding: 'Reminds me of my grandma! As a child she lived near a famous jam factory and regularly saw delivery of both strawberries and turnips to their manufacturing plant! I always think of turnips when I eat jam now.'
'As someone with an intolerance to apples I can confidently say, everything that tastes sweet has apple in it, everything savoury has onion in it, which I'm also intolerant to,' adds Carolyn Knipe. 'Obviously this is in regard to mass produced snack foods. The sugar in your tea probably doesn't have apple in it.'
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Some people also pointed out that a lot of red fruit juices contain apple, even when it's not the predominant flavour, and that you should keep an eye out for anything where the product description uses the word 'flavour', as more often than not it's a giveaway that it's not made with the actual food.
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.
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The Guardian
10-07-2025
- The Guardian
‘An uphill battle': why are midlife men struggling to make – and keep – friends?
As a therapist, Jeremy Mohler spends his days guiding middle-aged men through feelings of loneliness. He encourages them to seek connections, yet the 39-year-old is the first to admit it: when you're a guy, making real friends in midlife is difficult. 'It feels like an uphill battle,' says Mohler, who lives in Baltimore. Some call it a friendship recession: a time in midlife when close male friendships sink to their lowest. According to data from the Survey Center on American Life, 15% of US men said they do not have close friends in 2021, compared with 3% in 1990. Those reporting 10 or more close friends decreased from 33% to 13% during the same period. Authentic or close friendship may mean different things to different people. One straightforward description is finding 'someone who sees you as you see yourself, and you see them as they see themselves', says Niobe Way, a developmental psychology professor at New York University. Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas who studies friendships and has previously found it can take 200 hours to make a close friend, says: 'A true friend will support and stand by you no matter what, will stand up for you, and tells you the truth.' The reasons for the friendship recession are complex, says Hall. Straight men Mohler's age often depend on their partners for socializing. Some dive deep into parenthood. College buddies disperse. Work priorities take over. And moving to a new city or country can dissolve formerly strong bonds. Ultimately, it can feel too hard to invest time in new and deeper friendships. Despite loneliness due to estrangement from relatives or different family structures, 'many gay men find and build community around an embrace of shared spaces,' says Matt Lundquist, a therapist in New York, which he finds is less common for heterosexual men. 'This sort of intentional taking on a project of searching for new, deeper friendships is more a heterosexual project. It is a demographic that is very isolated.' 'My clients are looking for more connections,' Mohler says. 'I have ideas and skills and solutions, but I'm still personally searching for practical ways to do that.' He is not the only one feeling the itch to turn a workout buddy into someone he can call on a Saturday afternoon. US men aged 15 to 35 are among the loneliest in wealthy countries, with 25% reporting feeling lonely for a lot of the previous day, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. Marketing professor and popular podcast host Scott Galloway recently touted the benefits of authentic connections for men amid what he called a 'perfect storm of loneliness'. 'Men have it drilled into us from an early age that vulnerability and emotional connections are signs of weakness,' Galloway wrote. 'They aren't, and men with influence have an obligation to cleanse this bullshit version of masculinity from the zeitgeist.' The men I interviewed say they don't want to be just a stat in the much-touted loneliness epidemic, which is also increasingly being tied to poorer physical and mental health outcomes. Still, it's difficult to avoid in practice. 'There's a certain cultural understanding that men don't know how to enact intimacy or that it's simply not practiced very much,' says Hall. 'And even men's popular culture doesn't show you how to go about the process.' Some are figuring it out. Jedidiah Jenkins, 42, an author living in Los Angeles, says he's had to relearn about the importance of maintaining close bonds with other men. As a teenager, he had plenty of friends; making them seemed effortless. 'You didn't have to work for it,' Jenkins says. 'We have to learn in the same way that we actively download dating apps and pursue a relationship that we have to pursue friendships.' For the last few years, Jenkins has organized a weekly hangout at his house. Anywhere from three to 20 friends show up for what he calls 'riff raff Thursdays', including a handful of regulars. He starts a bonfire and serves hot tea, mezcal and peanut butter pretzels. The consistency means that his friends know what they are doing that week, and takes away the pressure of scheduling one-on-one meetups. 'It doesn't require the full energy of finding time for a weekly coffee date,' he says. Before the second world war, same-sex male friendships were a large part of public life, and women's friendships were seen as frivolous and less important, Hall explains. But these roles have since reversed. Today, most heterosexual men feel they are marrying someone who becomes the default events planner, and their genuine close friendships fall away, Hall says. 'They rely on their wives to develop the social calendar – they think: 'She'll do it and I don't have to do it',' he says. 'There's atrophy in their skillset.' Way, the developmental psychology professor, says girls and boys start out on the same trajectory of prioritizing friendships. But boys feel pressure to give up their same-sex friendships because it feels 'girly or gay'. Rates of male suicide also tick up around adolescence. 'It's not that they naturally don't want these friendships. They had them when they were younger,' she says. 'It's not some weird biological thing.' Way, who receives emails from hundreds of men each year about her research, says more of them feel like it's possible to secure closer friendships after the pandemic because the topic is receiving more attention. 'They are now recognizing what the problems are,' she says. 'They've hit the bottom of the barrel.' At the same time, her research points to a culture that doesn't value friendships. Since the 1980s, she says, the United States' focus on self-fulfillment has reduced the importance of friendships for everyone. Digital life distracts us too much or provides a simulacrum of closeness; even listening to podcasts can bring a faux feeling of intimacy. 'We focus more on the self, and the tech just exacerbates it,' she says. In Hebden Bridge, England, former professional rugby player Craig White has started hosting nature retreats for men to encourage deeper connections. White, now a mentor and coach, runs a 'mid-life intensive' program that offers online meetings along with a three-day in-person meet-up. White's retreats involve hiking, spending nights around a fire, discussing feelings openly and bonding outside of day-to-day pressures. When it came to his father, 'healthy male friendship wasn't modeled and the friendship groups involved alcohol,' he says. 'A lot of my clients are brilliant men, but a lot of their old friends are still doing the same thing and there's a reluctance to go back to that.' Draymond Washington, an entrepreneur and former financial adviser, founded a private club in Chicago called Three Cities Social earlier this year, and says connecting midlife professionals is the goal. But after months of hosting events, he realized that while the club's membership is roughly 40% male, event attendance was typically 80% women, he says. Men aren't always willing to come to the club to socialize. So he has started hosting events aimed specifically at men in their 30s and 40s: boxing classes, pickleball and boat rides. 'Guys like to do stuff,' Washington says. 'Someone needs to curate and then they do want to show up.' He's been able to engage more men this way, but it's been more difficult than he expected. Hall says men must work against decades of complacency to build friendships powerful enough to dispel loneliness. His prior research shows that men tend to have low expectations for their friendships in general, and often say that even those low expectations aren't being met. (Women, on the other hand, have expectations that are too high.) Such low-stakes relationships tend to leave them feeling even more alone when compared with deeper friendships, he adds. Kevin Cleaver, 40, who relocated from New York to Highland Park, Illinois, says he decided to focus on making connections after Covid-era isolation. In New York, Cleaver felt increasingly alone, and he wasn't willing to go through that again in a new city. 'That mindset helped me take the bull by the horns to meet others here,' he says. The transition from casual to deeper friendship can take time, and it's not always apparent who is eager to make the leap, says Cleaver. He started at the gym, saying hello to people he saw after workouts. One is now a genuine friend; they bumped into each other at the grocery store and were both buying steak, which they took as a sign to socialize outside the gym. 'The more we ran into each other, the more we'd chat, but it was only after we found out that we had an interesting overlap in life and relationships that we became closer,' he adds. They have since bonded over similar romantic predicaments and regularly meet to chat over beer. Some men – especially those in heterosexual relationships who have children – have mixed feelings about how their partners affect friendship, feeling their lack of support makes it difficult to pursue even platonic relationships outside marriage. Jenkins, the author from LA, says that based on his and friends' experiences, significant others are not always supportive. Some assume men hanging out together can lead to inappropriate behavior, reinforcing a cultural narrative that 'when men are spending time with other men, they are probably doing devious activities, going to strip clubs or having sex with somebody else or getting trashed,' he says. Recently, though, he has witnessed some of the women in his friend groups let go of their protectiveness and encourage these friendships, he adds. But Mohler, the therapist, says he emulates how his partner, a woman, handles her own friendships. For example, he checks in with friends after a fun evening or makes sure to schedule future plans when he's hanging out with someone. 'I say: 'I had a really great time; we should do this again – let's keep the ball rolling,'' he says. Additionally, he has let go of surface-level friendships, prioritizing those that have the potential to deepen. 'I have a little bit of sadness and grief for male friendships that don't go beyond the surface,' he says. 'I want to hear what they are struggling with, and I want them to help me.' Hall, the professor, says that many men still consider friendships to be a women's issue. And despite the idea of social health becoming more mainstream, he's unsure whether many men are aware of or influenced by these ideas, such as loneliness affecting physical health. He has yet to see evidence that there's a persistent trend of men seeking out meaningful friendship. 'It could be just a flash in the pan,' he says. Could younger men offer a bright spot? Some research on undergraduate males from 2017 showed they want more intimate bonds and are comfortable with 'bromances', which they say rival or exceed romantic relationships. Jaquis Covington, 29, is a member of Three Cities Social; he grew up in a large family and says he witnessed his own parents turn only to other family members for support. Seeing his parents feel alone at times has motivated him to do things differently. Outside of his work in commercial real estate, he spends time playing video games or golfing with friends he met through the club. 'My parents' best friends were probably their kids. I need to invest in friendships outside of what I'm accustomed to,' he says. 'I think about who is going to be at my wedding.'
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- The Guardian
‘An uphill battle': why are midlife men struggling to make – and keep – friends?
As a therapist, Jeremy Mohler spends his days guiding middle-aged men through feelings of loneliness. He encourages them to seek connections, yet the 39-year-old is the first to admit it: when you're a guy, making real friends in midlife is difficult. 'It feels like an uphill battle,' says Mohler, who lives in Baltimore. Some call it a friendship recession: a time in midlife when close male friendships sink to their lowest. According to data from the Survey Center on American Life, 15% of US men said they do not have close friends in 2021, compared with 3% in 1990. Those reporting 10 or more close friends decreased from 33% to 13% during the same period. Authentic or close friendship may mean different things to different people. One straightforward description is finding 'someone who sees you as you see yourself, and you see them as they see themselves', says Niobe Way, a developmental psychology professor at New York University. Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas who studies friendships and has previously found it can take 200 hours to make a close friend, says: 'A true friend will support and stand by you no matter what, will stand up for you, and tells you the truth.' The reasons for the friendship recession are complex, says Hall. Straight men Mohler's age often depend on their partners for socializing. Some dive deep into parenthood. College buddies disperse. Work priorities take over. And moving to a new city or country can dissolve formerly strong bonds. Ultimately, it can feel too hard to invest time in new and deeper friendships. Despite loneliness due to estrangement from relatives or different family structures, 'many gay men find and build community around an embrace of shared spaces,' says Matt Lundquist, a therapist in New York, which he finds is less common for heterosexual men. 'This sort of intentional taking on a project of searching for new, deeper friendships is more a heterosexual project. It is a demographic that is very isolated.' 'My clients are looking for more connections,' Mohler says. 'I have ideas and skills and solutions, but I'm still personally searching for practical ways to do that.' He is not the only one feeling the itch to turn a workout buddy into someone he can call on a Saturday afternoon. US men aged 15 to 35 are among the loneliest in wealthy countries, with 25% reporting feeling lonely for a lot of the previous day, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. Marketing professor and popular podcast host Scott Galloway recently touted the benefits of authentic connections for men amid what he called a 'perfect storm of loneliness'. 'Men have it drilled into us from an early age that vulnerability and emotional connections are signs of weakness,' Galloway wrote. 'They aren't, and men with influence have an obligation to cleanse this bullshit version of masculinity from the zeitgeist.' The men I interviewed say they don't want to be just a stat in the much-touted loneliness epidemic, which is also increasingly being tied to poorer physical and mental health outcomes. Still, it's difficult to avoid in practice. 'There's a certain cultural understanding that men don't know how to enact intimacy or that it's simply not practiced very much,' says Hall. 'And even men's popular culture doesn't show you how to go about the process.' Some are figuring it out. Jedidiah Jenkins, 42, an author living in Los Angeles, says he's had to relearn about the importance of maintaining close bonds with other men. As a teenager, he had plenty of friends; making them seemed effortless. 'You didn't have to work for it,' Jenkins says. 'We have to learn in the same way that we actively download dating apps and pursue a relationship that we have to pursue friendships.' For the last few years, Jenkins has organized a weekly hangout at his house. Anywhere from three to 20 friends show up for what he calls 'riff raff Thursdays', including a handful of regulars. He starts a bonfire and serves hot tea, mezcal and peanut butter pretzels. The consistency means that his friends know what they are doing that week, and takes away the pressure of scheduling one-on-one meetups. 'It doesn't require the full energy of finding time for a weekly coffee date,' he says. Prior to the second world war, same-sex male friendships were a large part of public life, and women's friendships were seen as frivolous and less important, Hall explains. But these roles have since reversed. Today, most heterosexual men feel they are marrying someone who becomes the default events planner, and their genuine close friendships fall away, Hall says. 'They rely on their wives to develop the social calendar – they think: 'She'll do it and I don't have to do it',' he says. 'There's atrophy in their skillset.' Way, the developmental psychology professor, says girls and boys start out on the same trajectory of prioritizing friendships. But boys feel pressure to give up their same-sex friendships because it feels 'girly or gay'. Rates of male suicide also tick up around adolescence. 'It's not that they naturally don't want these friendships. They had them when they were younger,' she says. 'It's not some weird biological thing.' Way, who receives emails from hundreds of men each year about her research, says more of them feel like it's possible to secure closer friendships after the pandemic because the topic is receiving more attention. 'They are now recognizing what the problems are,' she says. 'They've hit the bottom of the barrel.' At the same time, her research points to a culture that doesn't value friendships. Since the 1980s, she says, the United States's focus on self-fulfillment has reduced the importance of friendships for everyone. Digital life distracts us too much or provides a simulacrum of closeness; even listening to podcasts can bring a faux feeling of intimacy. 'We focus more on the self, and the tech just exacerbates it,' she says. In Hebden Bridge, England, former professional rugby player Craig White has started hosting nature retreats for men to encourage deeper connections. White, now a mentor and coach, runs a 'mid-life intensive' program that offers online meetings along with a three-day in-person meet-up. White's retreats involve hiking, spending nights around a fire, discussing feelings openly and bonding outside of day-to-day pressures. When it came to his father, 'healthy male friendship wasn't modeled and the friendship groups involved alcohol,' he says. 'A lot of my clients are brilliant men, but a lot of their old friends are still doing the same thing and there's a reluctance to go back to that.' Draymond Washington, an entrepreneur and former financial adviser, founded a private club in Chicago called Three Cities Social earlier this year, and says connecting midlife professionals is the goal. But after months of hosting events, he realized that while the club's membership is roughly 40% male, event attendance was typically 80% women, he says. Men aren't always willing to come to the club to socialize. So he has started hosting events aimed specifically at men in their 30s and 40s: boxing classes, pickleball and boat rides. 'Guys like to do stuff,' Washington says. 'Someone needs to curate and then they do want to show up.' He's been able to engage more men this way, but it's been more difficult than he expected. Hall says men must work against decades of complacency to build friendships powerful enough to dispel loneliness. His prior research shows that men tend to have low expectations for their friendships in general, and often say that even those low expectations aren't being met. (Women, on the other hand, have expectations that are too high.) Such low-stakes relationships tend to leave them feeling even more alone when compared to deeper friendships, he adds. Kevin Cleaver, 40, who relocated from New York to Highland Park, Illinois, says he decided to focus on making connections after Covid-era isolation. In New York, Cleaver felt increasingly alone, and he wasn't willing to go through that again in a new city. 'That mindset helped me take the bull by the horns to meet others here,' he says. The transition from casual to deeper friendship can take time, and it's not always apparent who is eager to make the leap, says Cleaver. He started at the gym, saying hello to people he saw after workouts. One is now a genuine friend; they bumped into each other at the grocery store and were both buying steak, which they took as a sign to socialize outside the gym. 'The more we ran into each other, the more we'd chat, but it was only after we found out that we had an interesting overlap in life and relationships that we became closer,' he adds. They've since bonded over similar romantic predicaments and regularly meet to chat over beer. Some men – especially those in heterosexual relationships who have children – have mixed feelings about how their partners affect friendship, feeling their lack of support makes it difficult to pursue even platonic relationships outside of marriage. Jenkins, the author from LA, says that based on his and friends' experiences, significant others are not always supportive. Some assume men hanging out together can lead to inappropriate behavior, reinforcing a cultural narrative that 'when men are spending time with other men, they are probably doing devious activities, going to strip clubs or having sex with somebody else or getting trashed,' he says. Recently, though, he has witnessed some of the women in his friend groups let go of their protectiveness and encourage these friendships, he adds. But Mohler, the therapist, says he emulates how his partner, a woman, handles her own friendships. For example, he checks in with friends after a fun evening or makes sure to schedule future plans when he's hanging out with someone. 'I say: 'I had a really great time; we should do this again – let's keep the ball rolling,'' he says. Additionally, he has let go of surface-level friendships, prioritizing those that have the potential to deepen. 'I have a little bit of sadness and grief for male friendships that don't go beyond the surface,' he says. 'I want to hear what they are struggling with, and I want them to help me.' Hall, the professor, says that many men still consider friendships to be a women's issue. And despite the idea of social health becoming more mainstream, he's unsure whether many men are aware of or influenced by these ideas, such as loneliness affecting physical health. He has yet to see evidence that there's a persistent trend of men seeking out meaningful friendship. 'It could be just a flash in the pan,' he says. Could younger men offer a bright spot? Some research on undergraduate males from 2017 showed they want more intimate bonds and are comfortable with 'bromances', which they say rival or exceed romantic relationships. Jaquis Covington, 29, is a member of Three Cities Social; he grew up in a large family and says he witnessed his own parents turn only to other family members for support. Seeing his parents feel alone at times has motivated him to do things differently. Outside of his work in commercial real estate, he spends time playing video games or golfing with friends he met through the club. 'My parents' best friends were probably their kids. I need to invest in friendships outside of what I'm accustomed to,' he says. 'I think about who is going to be at my wedding.'
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- The Guardian
‘You open the fridge – nothing': renewed threat of US hunger as Trump seeks to cut food aid
Jade Johnson has a word to describe the experience of going hungry in one of the world's richest countries. 'Humbling.' The last time she endured the misery of skipping meals was about 18 months ago. She was working two jobs as a home health aide and in childcare, but after paying the rent and bills she still didn't have enough to feed herself and her young daughter Janai. She would always make sure Janai had all she needed and then, when the money ran out, trim her own eating habits accordingly. Three meals a day became one, solids would be replaced with copious amounts of water to dull the hunger pangs. 'It's like you get humbled,' Johnson, 25, says in the apartment where she is raising Janai, six, in Germantown, Maryland. 'You open the fridge, close it, open it again but nothing's gonna change – there's nothing in there.' Those lean times were in the days before Johnson was accepted on to Snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, that provides low-income families with help to buy nutritious groceries. Johnson had applied several times, but had been knocked back. She was finally approved, with the help of an adviser whom she met at a parents' evening at Janai's kindergarten. For more than a year now she has received $520 every month to buy good food – equivalent to $8.50 for her and Janai each day, or under $3 a meal. That may not sound much, but it has been transformative. 'Snap has been a blessing for me,' she says. 'I can provide for Janai when I come home, cook dinner for myself. It's improved my relationship with my kid, my friends, my clients.' Now Johnson is bracing herself for a return to those grim days of food insecurity. Donald Trump's multi-trillion dollar domestic policy legislation, his 'big, beautiful bill' which is currently battling through Congress, would slash up to $300bn from the Snap program in order to fund extended tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. The cuts amount to the largest in the program's history. They come at a time when food insecurity is already on the rise in all 50 states. Voting is meant to begin soon in the US Senate, an attempt to clear the bill through the upper chamber in time to meet Trump's ambition to sign it into law by 4 July. Senate Republican leaders are mindful that any revisions they write into the bill must avoid causing further acrimony when the legislation moves back for final approval to the House of Representatives, where the package was passed this spring by an agonising single vote. Under the House version of the bill, parents of children seven and above would become liable for stringent work requirements from which they are currently exempted until their child is 18. Johnson would be affected by the new restriction, as Janai turns seven in November. If that seven-year cutoff remains in the final bill (the Senate is proposing that parents must meet work requirements once their child reaches 14), Johnson will have to prove from Janai's next birthday that she is working at least 20 hours a week. Otherwise she would lose her Snap benefits. That would be a tough burden to meet, given that her hours fluctuate week by week as clients' needs change. She has very little slack in her calendar to work further hours, because on top of her two jobs she is studying part-time at night to become a dialysis technician. So Johnson is nervously following the passage of the bill, and preparing for the worst. Should her food assistance be pulled, it will be back to 'grind mode' and a renewed state of humbling. Johnson is one of millions of struggling Americans who are threatened with losing their Snap benefits under Trump's bill. Most of the political attention in Congress has focused on Medicaid, the health insurance scheme for low-income families which faces even greater cuts of at least $800bn under the House version of the bill. Anti-hunger advocates fear that the potential devastation of Snap cuts is being overlooked. 'I just don't think it's getting the sort of press and general public attention it demands,' said Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, executive director of Children's HealthWatch. She described the proposed cuts as a 'catastrophic attack that will change the structure of Snap, damage children's and parents' health, and have ripple effects that will devastate local economies'. Since it was founded as a permanent program by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Snap has grown into America's most effective weapon against hunger. It currently helps put food on the table for over 40 million people, almost half of whom are children. Poverty experts have been stunned by the scale of Trump's proposed cuts. They say they would deliver a terrible blow to one of the country's core values – that all Americans should have enough to eat. 'It's like we are throwing in the towel, and saying hunger won,' said Salaam Bhatti, Snap director at the Food Research & Action Center (Frac). 'It's upsetting that one of the wealthiest countries in the world is on the brink of increasing hunger for millions of people.' The proposed cuts fall under several headings. The one that Johnson will feel most immediately is the expanded work requirements that will put about 8 million people at risk of losing some or all of their Snap benefits. In addition to the expanded work requirements for parents of children aged seven to 18, older adults aged 55 to 64 would also now have to meet heavy work stipulations. That cohort includes Johnson's mother, Jámene, who currently receives Snap but might be thrown off it as she is 55 and would be subject to the expanded demands. Jámene currently receives $52 a month in Snap benefits. Again, that might sound minimal, but without it she would be unable to buy fresh vegetables and meat and she would be hard pressed to offer any help to her daughter and granddaughter when reserves are running low. The bill also transfers some of the costs of benefits, for the first time in the program's 61-year history, from the federal government to individual states. Under the House bill, states would be liable for up to 15% of the benefit costs, while the portion of administrative costs they already bear would rise from 50% to 75%. A state like Virginia would have to fork out an extra $500m a year. In Bhatti's estimation, many states are simply going to be unable or unwilling to foot that bill – and will pass on the pain to their poorer citizens. 'States don't have that type of money, and so they would either reduce costs by removing families from the program, or by pulling out of the program entirely.' Were Virginia to bail out of Snap, that would put over 800,000 people at immediate risk of food insecurity, including over 300,000 children. Paradoxically, many of the states that would be most impacted, and by extension a large proportion of the families that could be left struggling to feed themselves, are in the rural Republican heartlands that voted heavily for Trump. One of the hardest hit would be Louisiana, which has 44% of its population on Snap or Medicaid or both. The stakes are almost as high in deep red Arkansas (38%) and Mississippi (37%). 'I don't understand why policymakers are pursuing this bill when this will obviously hurt a large majority of their own constituents for whom Snap is a lifeline,' said Lelaine Bigelow of the Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality. West Virginia, with 38% of its population in receipt of Snap or Medicaid, is an especially poignant example. This was the state where the food assistance program was born: John F Kennedy opened a pilot program there following his tour of the economically stricken Appalachian coal country. 'I don't know whether the cuts will give rise to what Kennedy saw – hungry children with bloated bellies,' said Tracy Roof, a political scientist at the University of Richmond who is writing a book on the history of food stamps. 'But I do know that in a country as wealthy as the US, it's unforgivable that you should have people going hungry to bed.' Trump's hydra-headed cuts would also make it harder for low-income families to claim benefits in areas with high unemployment rates. The basket of food against which Snap is calculated would also be frozen, so that over the next 10 years the value of the benefit would decline in real terms from the current average of $6 a day, which many experts already consider inadequate. As a further threat, food assistance will be removed from up to 250,000 refugees and other people granted humanitarian protections in the US. In some ways, the Senate iteration of the bill is even more extreme than the House one. It targets millions of people in special groups, forcing them to meet tough work requirements to which they had been exempted. That includes military veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people in foster care. Research by the Georgetown Center exposes the staggering disparity that underpins Trump's plan. Under the House bill, over $1tn would be withdrawn in Snap and Medicaid cuts from 31% of the American people who earn on average $30,000 a year. The money would then be handed over, in the form of tax cuts, to the top 2% of the population, with average incomes of $1.5m a year. The transfer of resources would not only exacerbate America's gaping inequality, it would also have a calamitous effect on the local economies in poorer parts of the country. Disrupting the flow of Snap food deliveries could send shock waves through the entire food supply chain, from farmer to truck driver to grocery store. Numerous studies have also revealed the damage done to the health and prospects of children when they endure food insecurity at a young age. A child's developmental arc for language, hearing, vision and other critical faculties all peak by four, which means that if they receive insufficient nourishment in the early years it can have crushing long-term consequences. 'Small deprivations have outsized impacts,' Ettinger de Cuba said. 'Kids who are food insecure are more likely to be at risk of poor health, hospitalizations, and developmental delays.' In Johnson's case, she knows Janai will be protected from such a disaster because as a parent she will do everything she can to provide for her daughter. Even if that means giving up her dream of getting on in life, or going hungry herself. What puzzles Johnson about the difficult future she is now facing, courtesy of the 'big, beautiful bill', is that it feels like she is being punished for doing everything she can to be a good American. She's raised her daughter right, works two jobs to pay the bills, studies at night at her own cost to improve herself and find more stable work. 'I'm just trying to be a decent, functioning human being,' she says. 'Can't they let me get my life together first, before they start snatching stuff away from me?'
