Denver survey finds 35% of adults cut or skipped meals over food costs

A November 2025 Denver survey found that 35% of adults reported cutting or skipping meals because they lacked money for food, city officials told the City Council in July. The city’s Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids program, funded by a sales tax scheduled to sunset in 2028, is also entering a planning period for possible reauthorization.

The survey included 3,046 people across Denver’s 11 City Council districts. Its summary says the results were weighted demographically to reflect Denver’s population but does not provide a probability-sampling design, response rate or sampling frame. The 35% figure is a share of adults surveyed, not a household rate, and the available summary does not establish the exact wording of the underlying question or support describing it as USDA-validated, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment’s survey summary says.

Among adults who reported skipping meals, 68% identified food being too expensive as a major or significant barrier, and 47% said they skipped meals monthly. Those figures do not represent all 3,046 respondents. The summary also reports higher rates of parents saying they cut or skipped their children’s meals in Council districts 3, 7 and 11, a separate measure from the citywide adult figure.

The July 14 council discussion focused on food insecurity, planning for a Food Justice Summit and recommendations about Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids. City health officials presented the survey findings to the council, but the meeting record does not show that the council had referred a reauthorization measure to voters or settled ballot language.

Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids briefing materials report that the program invested more than $100 million from August 2020 through July 2025, funded 118 organizations and reported serving 101,977 unique annual households. The materials also report 48.2 million meals and snacks, 55.5 million pounds of food distributed, 855 youth jobs and 49,128 hours of food and nutrition instruction. Those are program- and grantee-reported measures; the briefing does not explain whether households served by multiple grantees were counted once or more than once.

The program’s HFDK07 grant cycle highlights a gap in the public record. The commission approved 12 recommended contracts with full funding May 29, 2026, and contracting began June 1. One awarded organization ceased operations in June, leaving 11 contracts. The briefing does not name the organization or say whether its award was canceled, returned, reallocated or transferred, or whether its planned services continued through another provider.

The final briefing lists 11 HFDK07 awards totaling $6,503,590.90. The listed amounts add to that figure; a separate summary rounds the total to $6,503,591. The recipients include GES Coalition, Focus Points Family Resource Center, SustainEd Farms, Denver Public Schools Community Hubs, Slow Food Denver, Metro Caring, the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center partnership, Struggle of Love Foundation, West High School, Sun Valley Kitchen + Community Center and Hope Communities. Their work includes meals and snacks, food distribution, nutrition and cooking education, gardening, food-justice programming and SNAP and WIC outreach. The table does not identify neighborhood-level awards or populate its City Council district column, the HFDK City Council briefing reports.

The briefing says that, among surveyed clients in the 2024-25 grant cycle, 79% knew more about healthy eating, 92% said they ate more vegetables because of HFDK and 99% said HFDK reduced their worries about obtaining their next meal. It does not provide the number surveyed, denominators, response rate, recruitment method, survey instrument, comparison group or weighting. The figures should therefore be treated as client-reported outcomes, not proof that HFDK caused the changes.

HFDK says its evaluation work includes grantee-data analysis, third-party evaluation, a citywide impact and landscape analysis and technical assistance. The briefing identifies Cicatelli Associates Inc., or CAI, in connection with an economic-impact project but does not provide that project’s methods, results or completion date, or establish that CAI produced the three client-outcome percentages.

HFDK08 remained in planning as of the Aug. 26 briefing. The next request for proposals was estimated for fall or winter 2026 but had not been released. About $11.4 million was identified for a future HFDK08 funding round and microgrants combined; the materials do not state a final HFDK08-only amount, award count or contract timeline.

Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids was created by a voter-approved 2018 measure and funded through a 0.08% sales tax. The briefing says reauthorization would require a measure to be referred to voters, but the records reviewed show no referral, ballot language, election date, replacement tax rate or new funding level. If the program is not reauthorized, the materials say remaining funds must be spent by Dec. 31, 2029.

The records establish a large, active food-access grant program facing a 2028 decision point, while leaving key accountability questions unanswered: which HFDK07 awardee closed, what happened to its money and services, how annual households were counted and what methods underlie the client-outcome percentages.