Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made waves this week with claims that the Trump administration’s revamped food pyramid leaves plenty of room for Americans to maintain a healthy diet for as little as $3 a meal.
In an interview Wednesday with News Nation, Rollins said her agency came up with plenty of low-cost meals that conform with the new dietary guidelines, which call for Americans to eat more red meat and butter, and less processed food. “Are we asking them to spend more on their diet? And the answer to that is no.”
She said the agency ran “over 1,000 simulations” and found that “it can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, you know, a corn tortilla and one other thing.”
On social media, some people ridiculed Rollins’s comments. Who eats one piece of broccoli as a side dish? How can someone buy just one piece of broccoli or one piece of chicken at the grocery store? Some pointed out that a piece of chicken and a tortilla don’t add up to nearly the recommended caloric intake for most people. Others drew illustrations of a plate with a measly piece of broccoli and the words “one other thing.”
But the Agriculture Department said the scenario is no joke. A USDA spokesperson did not respond to questions about how the simulations worked but said in a Thursday email exchange that “there are hundreds of thousands of meal options that will align with the [dietary guidelines] and at no increased cost to American consumers.”
For example, the spokesman wrote, a day’s worth of meals might include eggs, whole milk, fruit and whole grain bread for breakfast; canned tuna, cottage cheese, salad and oil dressing for lunch; and roasted chicken, vegetables and milk for dinner.
The agency’s pitch comes as affordability continues to vex many Americans. Food prices in particular have remained stubbornly high — ticking up 0.7 percent in December from the month before, more than double the rate of overall inflation — government figures show. Nearly a quarter of consumers who use “buy now, pay later” apps are using them to pay for groceries in installments.
“Is it possible to cook one healthy meal for $3? Yes, it is. Is it easy to live a lifestyle where you consistently are able to put together healthy balanced meals for $3? No, it is not,” said Joel Berg, CEO of the organization Hunger Free America. Eating cheaply and healthily requires effort, he said, such as buying food in bulk (which generally means having a car to transport it and a pantry large enough to store it), or shopping at multiple grocery stores to get the best deals.
Most low-income people are busy working and raising their children, he said, and often traveling long distances by public transportation. “Healthier food is generally more expensive, but it is also critical to know that it usually takes a lot more time.”
Then there’s the broder issue of affordability, he noted. “The top reason people can’t afford food isn’t, counterintuitively, the price of food. It’s the price of everything else.”
“Every penny that you have to pay for health care, every penny that you have to pay for child care, every penny that you have to pay for prescription drugs is less money that you have for food,” he said. “You can buy less healthy food. And that’s what happens on a daily basis.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American household’s annual spending on food topped $10,000 for the first time in 2024, or roughly $27 a day. Of the annual total, $6,224 was spent on food at home — a 2.8 percent increase from the year before — and $3,945 on food away from home.
The Democratic National Committee blasted Rollins’s comment in a statement: “Once again, Donald Trump and his administration are proving just how out of touch they are with everyday Americans. As the cost of food, rent, and health care continue to soar … Brooke Rollins is telling working families to feed their families with a piece of chicken and a piece of broccoli to cut costs.”
Some of the recommended foods rose sharply last year: beef and eggs, though egg prices have retreated since a spike driven by avian flu. Average household spending on meat, poultry, fish and eggs spiked 21.5 percent between 2023 and 2024, while spending on fruits and vegetables fell 3.5 percent, and 10 percent the year before that.
The new guidelines advise Americans to steer clear of processed foods with lots of sugar and salt, which have often been go-to foods for people who need fast and low-cost groceries.
A $10-a-person daily food budget, which the USDA spokesperson mentioned in Thursday’s email, is more than the daily allotment for SNAP. The food stamp program increased average benefits in 2021 from $4.80 to $6.20 per day, according to a Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis.
For the lowest-income households who are expected to contribute almost no money of their own for food, the maximum benefit this year is $994 for a family of four in the contiguous United States, which amounts to about $8.15 per person per day.
The USDA said consumers could put together low-cost meals featuring:
- Poultry, pork, canned tuna, tilapia, eggs, legumes, nuts, seeds and tofu.
- Whole milk, cheese, and cottage cheese.
- Beets, celery, tomatoes, frozen broccoli and cauliflower, corn, cucumbers, leafy greens, radishes, cabbage, sweet and white potatoes.
- Frozen blueberries and strawberries, oranges, fresh apples, melons, and canned pears.
- Whole grain bread, corn tortillas, oats, and sourdough bread.
- Butter and olive oil.
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