Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently suggested Americans can get the nutrition they need on $3 meals. The dollar amount falls below even the USDA's minimal Thrifty Food Plan ($3.31/meal), which is intentionally meager and designed for survival rather than variety or enjoyment.

Rollins later revised her estimate to $15.64 per day, and when USDA was asked to clarify her methodology, they provided only general information about dietary guidelines and simulations, without explaining the gap between her initial and revised figures.

Food insecurity affects 14.4% of Americans (47.9 million people) who must make difficult tradeoffs between food and other essential expenses like rent, utilities and medical care.

“I was very confused,” says Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs, about the three-dollar meal claim. “USDA has several established meal plans that they estimate the cost of each month. And none of those comes out to $3.”

“The maximum SNAP benefit...comes out to $3.31 a meal,” Heflin says. “So she was suggesting that the average family could survive on what is actually less than the Thrifty Food Plan.”

The Thrifty plan is intentionally bare-bones. “It’s not meant to be the average food plan. It’s meant to be one that you could survive on, but maybe not very happily,” Heflin says.

Read more or watch the interview with The Bulwark titled No Joy in Cooking.