I was grabbing coffee with a friend last week when she casually dropped a bombshell: she and her husband had just spent the weekend filling a second freezer with meat and stocking a “just-in-case” pantry in their garage.
This isn’t some off-grid survivalist couple. They live in a nice suburb outside Charlotte, both have corporate jobs, and their biggest worry used to be whether to upgrade to the bigger SUV. Yet here they were, talking about rotation schedules for canned goods like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Turns out they’re far from alone.
The Quiet Anxiety Almost No One Is Talking About
Recent 2025 survey data shows something startling: when people in wealthy nations are asked what keeps them up at night, Americans are now significantly more likely than almost anyone else to say food and water security.
Think about that for a second. The country that practically invented the 24-hour supermarket, where obesity has been a bigger public-health headline than hunger for decades, suddenly has one in five citizens naming access to basic groceries as a top national challenge. That number has barely budged since the twin shocks of the pandemic supply-chain chaos and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, while most of Europe has seen those fears fade.
Something is different here. And it’s worth figuring out why.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Across major developed nations, the percentage of people who rank food and water security among their country’s biggest problems looks roughly like this in 2025:
- United States – still hovering near 20-23%
- United Kingdom – 23%
- Italy – 21%
- France – 20%
- Spain – 16% (down from 2022 peak)
- Germany – 13% (sharply lower than 2022)
Europe’s spike was understandable: COVID exposed how fragile “just-in-time” delivery really is, and Russia’s invasion of the world’s breadbasket sent wheat and fertilizer prices through the roof almost overnight. But by 2024-2025 most European nations watched prices stabilize and shelves refill. Worry cooled.
America? The worry stayed hot.
It’s Not Just “Preppers Anymore
I’ve met plenty of people who rolled their eyes at the prepper movement for years. Suddenly those same people are the ones texting me photos of their Costco hauls – 50-pound bags of rice, cases of tuna, pallets of bottled water.
Costco actually reported in late 2024 that their emergency food bucket sales (yes, those big white buckets with 25-year shelf life meals) were up over 300% from pre-pandemic levels, and the trend hasn’t slowed in 2025. Their chief financial officer literally said on an earnings call that long-term food storage had become “a meaningful part of our business.” When Costco calls something meaningful, they’re talking tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We used to joke that only two kinds of people bought those buckets – Mormons and doomsday preppers. Now it’s teachers, nurses, accountants… regular middle-class families.”
– Costco executive, 2024 earnings call (paraphrased)
Four Big Reasons the Fear Hasn’t Faded Here
Several converging trends explain why this anxiety feels stickier in the U.S. than elsewhere.
1. Grocery inflation hit harder and lasted longer
Food-at-home prices in the U.S. are up roughly 25% since early 2020. Some categories – eggs, beef, citrus – have seen spikes of 50-100% at various points. Even though the year-over-year numbers have moderated, the absolute price level remains painfully high for many budgets. When milk is $5 a gallon and ground beef pushes $6 a pound, “food security” stops feeling abstract.
2. Supply-chain scares keep happening
Avian flu wiping out egg-laying flocks. The 2024 East Coast port strike threat. Recalls on everything from baby formula to salad kits. Canadian wildfire smoke shutting down Midwest farms. Every few months there’s a new headline that empties a specific shelf for weeks. People notice the pattern.
3. Climate impacts are in our backyard
Drought in the Southwest, hurricanes hammering Florida citrus, heat waves devastating Midwest corn yields – Americans don’t need to read about far-away climate change; we see it on the weather app and at the pump. When California (which grows two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts) spends years in severe drought, the produce aisle feels it immediately.
4. Policy and cultural feedback loops
Changes to SNAP eligibility, heated political rhetoric around immigration and farm labor, even social-media algorithms that amplify every empty-shelf video – all of it feeds a narrative that the system is one shock away from cracking. Once that narrative takes hold, it’s hard to shake.
Is the Fear Rational?
Here’s the tricky part: objectively, the United States is nowhere near a 1930s Dust Bowl scenario. Grocery stores are overwhelmingly full. Food banks report higher demand, but the supply chain is delivering calories at historic levels.
Yet rationality only goes so far when your grocery bill jumped 30% in four years and the news reminds you daily how interconnected – and therefore breakable – everything is. Modern abundance feels conditional in a way it didn’t a decade ago.
In my view, this is less about imminent famine and more about the erosion of perceived invincibility. For the first time in living memory, a large chunk of Americans are confronting the idea that the era of unquestioned plenty might have limits.
What People Are Actually Doing About It
The behavioral shift is fascinating:
- Home canning and preserving made a roaring comeback – Ball jar sales remain elevated three years running
- Community gardens and backyard chickens exploded in suburbs that used to ban them
- Freeze-dried food companies (once niche) are backed up on orders through 2026
- Seed companies report first-time vegetable gardeners now outnumber ornamental buyers
- Even mainstream financial advisors have started including “three-month expense buffer” language that quietly includes food alongside cash
It’s not panic. It’s hedging. A little insurance policy against a future no one can quite rule out.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The most likely scenario is that nothing catastrophic happens, prices slowly stabilize, new growing regions and technologies fill gaps, and in five years we’ll laugh about our 2025 pantry hoarding the way we now chuckle at Y2K preparations.
But even if the worst doesn’t arrive, something important has already changed. A generation that grew up believing the grocery store would always be stocked has quietly lost that certainty. That psychological shift – more than any single empty shelf – may be the real story of this decade.
And honestly? Maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. A little humility about our food system, a touch more resilience baked into daily life, an extra freezer in the garage “just in case” – perhaps it makes us wiser rather than weaker.
The shelves are full today. The question is whether we still believe – deep down – they’ll be full tomorrow.
Either way, my friend in Charlotte isn’t emptying that second freezer anytime soon.
