As food prices continue to climb, millions of Nigerians are no longer choosing what to eat. They are choosing what they can survive on, with consequences that extend beyond the dinner table and into their mental well-being.

There is a particular kind of hunger that is embarrassing to admit. The kind where someone passes by any food, and you say yes, please, because you have managed the hunger quietly and drunk water to stretch it. You tell yourself you will eat later, later becomes evening, and evening becomes night. You go to bed having eaten once, maybe nothing, and you wake up and start the whole cycle and calculation again.

In my survey of 231 Nigerians, 67 people said they skip meals often or always because the cost of food and stress have made eating regularly feel like something that belongs to another kind of life. One respondent described surviving in this economy as: “Just being able to eat at least once every day.” Another wrote: “Eating anything to live.” A third described it as “like drowning with two-ton blocks strapped to each foot.”  This is what hunger under financial pressure actually feels like from the inside.

HOW IT SHOWS UP

Meal skipping is rarely about one missed meal. It tends to travel with other things. In my data, the same people skipping meals were also sleeping less, withdrawing from friends and family, and reporting the highest levels of anxiety. Almost always anxious in the past three months, 22 of the 67 skippers said. Another 20 said often, that is 42 out of 67 people living with frequent or near-constant anxiety, while also not eating enough.

This matters because hunger and anxiety are physiologically connected and uncomfortable together. When the body is undernourished, cortisol (the stress hormone) rises. When cortisol is consistently elevated, the body struggles to regulate mood, sleep, and focus. Skipping meals has become a mental health problem, and not only a food problem, over time.

“I’m 25, and I feel like I’m 50 already. My 20s just dey waste. This country just makes a person dey behind his peers.”

That response came from one of the 67. She wrote it as a side comment, almost apologetically, but it captures something that clinical language often misses: the grief of lost time coupled with the exhaustion of being young and already depleted; midlife crisis. 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING
When I asked the 67 skippers what keeps them mentally strong, the answers were almost uniformly spiritual. God, prayer, faith, Jesus, a few mentioned family, and hope. Almost no one mentioned food, which makes sense, because food is the very thing that has become unreliable. People anchor themselves to what they can still access, and for many Nigerians, that is faith. That answer deserves its own column, and it will get one. But for now, the point is this: people are coping, holding on to the tools they already have, and just need a few more alongside them.

WHAT CAN ACTUALLY HELP
The World Health Organisation and food security researchers are consistent on this: the goal when resources are constrained is not perfection. It is frequency, function, and to eat something more often, with whatever is available.
As a mental health nutritionist, these are the approaches I recommend when the budget is tight and the day is long:

1. Prioritise frequency over quantity: Three small portions of anything will do more for your mood and energy than one large meal. Your brain needs glucose at regular intervals. Missing that rhythm creates the fog, irritability, and low mood that many skippers describe.
2. Keep a hunger emergency on hand: Groundnuts, chin-chin, even a wrapped sweet in your bag. Something that costs very little and buys your body time. This will serve as a bridge between where you are and when eating is possible.
3. Name what is happening: Skipping meals due to stress or cost is not a personal failure. It is a systemic pressure with a physiological cost. Calling it what it is, rather than normalising it or feeling shame around it, is the first step toward addressing it.

Being able to eat at least once every day should not be a goal. But for too many people in this survey, it is. And we need to say that out loud.

If you recognised yourself in any of this, you are not alone. 67 people in my survey are living the same quiet arithmetic. 

Tips

How to stretch food without losing yourself

1. Cook once, eat twice
   When you can, prepare food that can serve more than one meal. Beans, stew, rice, yam porridge, moin moin, and soup can carry you for longer than buying food one plate at a time.
   
2. Buy food in small shared portions
   If bulk buying is too expensive alone, share staples with a neighbour, friend, or colleague. Splitting rice, beans, garri, pepper, oil, or crayfish can reduce the pressure of buying everything by yourself.
3. Use market timing wisely
   Some food items become cheaper late in the day when sellers want to clear stock. Tomatoes, peppers, vegetables, and fruits can sometimes cost less near closing time.
4. Keep one “no-cook” option at home
   On days when stress, light, gas, or transport ruins your plan, have something that does not need cooking. Garri, oats, pap, bread, banana, or groundnuts can stop hunger from becoming worse.
5. Ask for help before hunger becomes an emergency
   If you have someone safe to call, call early. Food pressure grows heavier when people suffer in silence until the body is already weak.