Calories and cents

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 28th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: 3 dollar dining.

Shortly after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released its new high-protein, whole foods-centric dietary guidelines, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins spoke on News Nation about the guidelines and grocery prices.

ROLLINS: We've run over 1000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, you know, corn tortilla, and one other thing. And so there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.

EICHER: Well that set off critics on social media…

FARMER: Please tell me what the something else is. Tell me what it is, Brooke! This is not enough food.

Some questioned the amount of food. Others couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the per-serving prices.

GREG: Here I've got three chicken breasts and these are $14.54, so that's well over my $3, so we're already in trouble, Brooke. You find these corn tortillas and they're $3.07 so then they're also over my $3. Brooke, I'm having a hard time doing this.

MAST: So what does it take to make a $3 meal these days? WORLD went to the store to find out.

AUDIO: [Starting car engine]

LINDSAY MAST: I shopped for groceries just outside Atlanta, at one of those stores where you rent your cart for a quarter.

Assistant Producer Emma Eicher shopped in Pittsburgh:

EMMA: Corn tortillas…these are just the same size as flour tortillas and they're cheaper.

In a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, Features Editor Kristen Flavin:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: …we are about to pack up and go to Dierbergs, because they seem to have a better selection of gluten free things.

HARRISON WATTERS: So we're here at Giant...

Washington Producer Harrison Watters took along his wife Naomi:

HARRISON WATTERS: So 2.5 pounds times 16 equals 40 ounces.

NAOMI WATTERS: Divide that by three…

Making a $3 dinner meant doing math in the meat aisle.

NAOMI WATTERS: 13 portions.

EMMA: $11.39 for all the groceries. So we'll see how that shakes out into each portion.

Next, cooking it up.

EMMA: I like to roast my broccoli, so I'm gonna go ahead and turn on the oven.

FLAVIN: So two ounces is about half a cup of cheese.

WATTERS: We're up to $1.32 in this pan.

FLAVIN: And honestly, I’m going to put a little bit of butter on it.

We met up afterward to talk about it.

MAST: Alright, Emma, what did you make?

EMMA: I made a flour tortilla taco with cheese as my dairy and chicken, just pan seared.

Three dollars and seven cents for that plate. Here’s Kristen:

FLAVIN: I made a chicken quesadilla with a hefty side of broccoli.

MAST: So your one extra thing was?

FLAVIN: Mexican style cheese.

She went over the per-meal budget. At $3.71, that’s more than 20%.

FLAVIN: I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants and just getting what I would normally get if I was buying those ingredients.

Harrison Watters got creative with his vegetables to make the math work.

WATTERS: We ended up going for kale instead of broccoli and were able to get an additional onion with that savings and were able to clock it in at under $3.

My Greek-inspired plate–with tzatziki, hummus, and cucumber, came out to $2.93.

So it seems like the $3 plate is possible–but shoppers will initially put out more than that at the store. And we’d need to eat the rest of the food purchased to make the math work. Most food isn’t sold in servings as small as Rollins mentioned.

WATTERS: If you want to pay $3 per serving, you're going to have to get a lot more of the ingredient, like…$20, $25 worth of ingredients in order to get a $3 portion.

But you don’t necessarily have to buy in bulk, either. That surprised Emma.

EMMA: I bought two chicken breasts, and then I bought a 10 count of tortillas, one thing of cheese, and then two small crowns of broccoli, and it still evened out to three dollars.

But we had some questions, too, like how the budget would work if you wanted to buy, say, steak, or fish?

Another question: how filling is it? All of us said we could have eaten more. Depending on the “something extra,” the calories on the meals ran anywhere from just under 600 to about 800. 

Harrison:

WATTERS: I think I got to about 80% full eating that. But I definitely did do a follow up cheese quesadilla.

A possible budget-blower.

Cost also isn’t the only factor to consider. Accessibility matters, too. Census data from 2019 shows nearly 19 million Americans live in low-income areas with little to no access to a supermarket. That’s roughly 5 percent of the population.

Rollins again:

ROLLINS: That's what we have to focus on, especially for our again, most vulnerable Americans who don't have a big grocery store a block from their house.

She highlighted the administration’s actions to require convenience stores to stock more groceries in order to keep participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

ROLLINS: So you'll begin to see that that aperture open up with more healthy foods available, especially for those with the least among us, that can serve about $3 a meal for that healthy meal for their kids.

For those with easy access and plenty of money though, the question can become how much is enough? 

KRISTEN: My daughter, her line is, “what are you eating? Can I have some?” And it doesn't matter if she's actually hungry. She just wants to eat what's in front of her at that moment. And so there's been a lot of conversations that we've had just in terms of not wasting and being good stewards of the food that we have and the resources that God has given us.

EMMA: I just think that this was a good exercise of being really mindful of looking at the price tag and saying, you know, how much am I willing to spend?

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