Americans Are Losing Faith in Food Safety, New Poll Shows

Confidence in the safety of the food Americans buy every week has fallen to the lowest level Gallup has ever measured, according to a national poll released on October 8, 2026. Just 65% of adults say they are very or somewhat confident that food sold at most grocery stores is safe to eat — seven points below a year earlier — while a record-low 47% trust the federal government to ensure the food supply is safe. Public faith in food safety has never been weaker.

The numbers behind the food safety slide

The erosion stretches back years, but it has accelerated sharply. Confidence in grocery-store food stood at 81% in 2019 and 72% in 2024, meaning it has now fallen 16 points from its pre-pandemic level. The share of Americans calling themselves very confident in store-bought food dropped from 31% to 23% over that period, while the share that is not too confident or not at all confident climbed from 18% to 34%. Trust in Washington’s role has collapsed further: the current figure compares with 68% in 2019 and an 85% high-water mark recorded in 2004.

Gallup ties the latest leg of the decline to a brutal summer for produce. A cyclospora outbreak that began in June and officially ended on September 11, 2026 sickened more than 12,000 people across 21 states, the largest such outbreak in U.S. history, according to the pollster. The 2024 reading, meanwhile, arrived amid a wave of recalls and serious illnesses tied to contaminated produce and other foods. Americans rate restaurant food about the same as grocery food — roughly two-thirds express confidence in each, with a third unconvinced about both.

How food safety fears are changing grocery carts

Worry is turning into action at the checkout. The poll found that 73% of adults avoided buying certain brands or types of food in the past year because of a recall or advisory — a 20-point jump from 53% in 2024, and above the 62% and 60% recorded during the salmonella and E. coli scares of 2007 and 2008. The trend shows food safety fears reshaping everyday shopping. Separately, 45% said they had thrown out or returned a food product in the past year, up from 40% in 2007, and 42% worried that something they ate may have been contaminated — a record high against 26% in 2024.

The collapse of trust is sharply partisan, but grocery behavior crosses party lines. Democrats’ confidence that grocery-store food is safe fell 14 points to 66%, while Republicans’ rose nine points to 77% and independents’ dropped 10 points to about six in ten. On the government’s role, 30% of Democrats are confident versus 70% of Republicans, the widest gap Gallup has measured on the question. Yet steering clear of recalled food is now mainstream in every camp: 63% of Republicans, nearly three-quarters of independents and more than four in five Democrats report avoiding certain foods this year.

Why trust collapsed — and what could rebuild it

Food-safety attorney Bill Marler, who has represented outbreak victims since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in 1993, argues the numbers reflect a system that resists reform. “Confidence is not restored by press releases,” he wrote in an essay published this week by Food Safety News, laying out a ten-point plan to restore food safety trust that includes publishing the list of stores that received recalled products, restoring federal pathogen surveillance, and accelerating the federal food traceability rule whose compliance date Congress pushed to 2028. He also called for a single independent food safety agency instead of what he described as a patchwork split across the FDA, USDA and other bodies.

For shoppers, the poll is a nudge to take recall notices seriously and to return or discard products named in advisories rather than hoping for the best. Food Safety News reports that outbreaks get solved faster when consumers can see exactly which stores received recalled items — a disclosure Marler has formally petitioned federal regulators to require. Until the delayed traceability upgrades arrive, the practical steps stay with the buyer: check advisories, report suspected foodborne illness to a local health department, and treat recall emails from grocery stores as worth opening. Recalls themselves keep coming — including a frozen berry recall that reached Walmart and Trader Joe’s — and our cooking and food news coverage tracks them as they land.