Low-income Families Can't Afford to Follow USDA Dietary Guidelines, Say UNH Researchers

Most of us have seen the Food Pyramid.

The icon symbolizes the US Department of Agriculture’s guidelines for a healthy diet.

It represents the six major food groups – and how much should be eaten from each.
But you may not know that the pyramid comes with a 7-day sample meal plan.

That plan got the attention of Joanne Burke, a nutritionist and professor at UNH in Durham.
Burke conducted a study to find out if the 2,000 calorie a day plan was affordable for low-income people.

“So our question was what would it cost to eat according to this plan not according to some low cost thrifty plan that is used to sometimes calculate food reimbursement.”

Her preliminary findings show that the recipes, though healthy, were indeed out of reach for poor families - particularly those who rely on food stamps.

Burke and I met at a local grocery store in Manchester – and looked at the costs of a few of the items from the recipes.

AMBI: grocery store scene “we do have bananas….we have large ban Alright let’s check out bananas Dianne see if some have brown flecks…nutril but not paying so much”

The bananas didn’t look so good. So we moved on to canteloupes.

AMBI: cantelope on scales....let’s see weight…we're going to buy it.”

The cantaloupe made it into our shopping basket.

Burke pointed out that the fruit may be a good buy for a middle class shopper – but the $1.99 price tag is dangerously close to the average daily food stamp allotment.

“Our data shows that it costs close to $8 a day to eat according to this menu and yet the food stamp average allotment for an individual is about $2.75 a day to eat so you could eat about two and a half days on this MyPyramid menu before you run out of food stamps if you followed the plan.”

USDA officials point out that food stamps were never meant to cover an entire food budget.

And they agreee that the Food Pyramid plan may be too pricey for many people.

The agency’s Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, Kate Houston, says the USDA has published what it calls the thrifty food plan

“..which is a plan that allows food stamp participants to eat a healthful diet at minimal cost……. And the development of the Thrifty Food Plan is based on dietary guidelines for Americans, and it demonstrates that a nutritious diet can be achieved with limited resources.”

But UNH’s Burke counters that the lower-priced foods are less nutritious than those in the Pyramid plan.

The shopping strategies of some people on food stamps give support to both sides in this debate.

35-year-old Heather Bridgeman was at a concord food pantry last week.

Food stamps don’t cover her monthly food budget and when they run out she picks up free canned goods, pasta and other items from pantries like this one.

Bridgeman also does what thousands of others do to stretch their food dollars.

“I’m a coupon clipping queen I’ll buy up to three newspapers a week on Sunday clip every coupon I’m going to need I’ll go to three or four different stores and I’ll use those coupons and save myself $10 dollars when I should’ve spent $20.”

In New Hampshire, over 55,000 people buy some of their groceries with food stamps.
Those benefits are slated to rise in October, but prices for fresh food and grain products are expected to rise more.

Meanwhile, food pantries in the state are experiencing shortages every month.

For NHPR News, I’m Dianne Finch