The federal government shutdown is stretching into a second week with no end in sight. As Democrats and Republicans in Congress face a politically charged funding impasse, nutrition experts warn that women and children reliant on federal food assistance funding are particularly vulnerable to imminently losing their grocery benefits.

In the midst of it all, America’s ability to track the real-world impacts of the shutdown on hunger is disappearing. Shortly before the shutdown, the Department of Agriculture moved to scrap the Household Food Security Report, the nation’s primary tool for tracking food insecurity, and in doing so, stripped away the very infrastructure needed to remedy rising hunger in America.

“If you want a functioning country where people are food-secure, this is the surve

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