The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation’s largest nutrition program, helping 41 million participants afford “nutritious foods essential for health and well-being.”
But a new study from the University of Notre Dame has found that SNAP participants in low-income households may not be able to meet the nutritional levels set by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).
The case study was designed to investigate whether SNAP participants could afford a healthy diet based on DGA’s recommended nutritional values. The DGA was created by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services to advise Americans on what to eat and drink to meet nutritional needs, promote health, and prevent disease.
“Healthy eating is a critical issue, especially within low-income communities, where there is a combination of economic and geographic constraints that make healthy and affordable food less attainable,” said Nitesh Chawla, director of the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society and the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame. “Individuals working within these constraints live in food deserts and must consider multiple factors when making decisions about their family’s diet.”
As a starting point, the research team used the maximum SNAP allocation offered for one person in Indiana as of October 2021, which was $250 per month. They divided this amount per day to determine what someone’s daily budget would be. The team then created a linear programming model that takes into account product nutritional value and price for items available within a national supermarket chain in South Bend.
“We found that people are essentially making trade-offs based on the information they have to try to stretch their finances and maximize nutrition,” said Ronald Metoyer, professor of computer science and engineering and vice president and associate provost for teaching and to learn. “Our idea for this study was to use calculations to collect all relevant information (e.g. inventory, prices and nutritional value) and use optimization to make those choices.”
Researchers took into account the cost per serving for a meal and the different dietary guidelines for men and women aged 31 to 50, while also keeping the cost of the diet as low as possible. While they found that it was possible to create a realistic women’s diet that fit SNAP’s financial allocation and DGA’s nutritional needs, it was not possible to do the same for men.
The team also analyzed the trade-off between cost and nutritional value, specifically for nutrients that Americans often overconsume: sodium, saturated fat and added sugars. To do this, they set aside the DGA’s parameters and selected only the cheapest food options to meet the SNAP budget. The researchers found a direct correlation between sodium and costs: as the cost of groceries decreases, the amount of sodium consumed increases.
Researchers also noted that daily vitamin and mineral intake requirements are the most difficult DGA parameters to meet on a SNAP budget.
“What we found was that it is very difficult to meet dietary guidelines for vitamins and minerals,” says Joe Germino, a doctoral student in the Lucy Institute’s DIAL Lab, who is advised by Chawla. “You have to make a conscious choice to find food that is cheap enough and actually fits your budget. It just adds another layer of complexity to an already difficult problem when you live in a food desert.”
Census data has identified 11 areas in St. Joseph County that can be identified as food deserts, or where a significant number of people live more than a mile from the nearest grocery store. Residents living in and around the area should consider their distance to full-service grocery stores and their access to transportation to purchase healthy foods.
These barriers are even more difficult to overcome for low-income households, which could cause greater reliance on alternative food sources such as food banks. Although the per-person budget for SNAP recipients has increased since this study was conducted, due to other economic constraints, such as inflation, researchers believe the results still hold true for those who rely on SNAP assistance today.
“The reason we chose South Bend is because we have areas that are considered food deserts and we see this lack of access to food happening within our own community,” said Annalisa Szymanski, a Lucy Graduate Scholar advised by Metoyer and a co-researcher. author about the research.
The study published in Frontiers in Big Data is just one way Notre Dame researchers are using technology to address this national challenge of food access and insecurity through the Food Information Networks (FINS) project. Under Metoyer’s leadership, FINS is funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project aims to deeply understand the barriers to access to healthy food, develop technology support, and deploy and study interventions in South Bend and Detroit.
The project will culminate in an app that uses optimization methods to recommend and suggest healthier foods to people based on their nutritional goals and budgets. In the spring, researchers will test a version of the app in Rum Village, a neighborhood in South Bend. The goal is to test the app to see how this solution helps overcome transportation limitations. The pilot will work with local Walmart supermarkets.
“During the pilot we will test whether we promote different suggestions for healthier food products in the app, will that influence the way people eat? Or what if they know there is a healthier product on offer?” Szymanski said. “We want to see how this technology, when considering both nutritional goals and budget, can have a realistic impact on eating habits.”
The researchers are also investigating how the FINS project could use artificial intelligence, such as large language models, to create personalized nutritional recommendations.
Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu