by The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation’s largest nutrition program, helping 41 million participants pay for “nutritious food essential to health and well-being.”
But a new study from the University of Notre Dame 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 aim of the case study was to examine whether SNAP participants would be able to have a healthy diet based on the nutritional values recommended by DGA. The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services created the DGA to advise Americans on what they should 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 just as unattainable,” 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. “People who work within these constraints live in a food desert, and have to consider multiple factors when making decisions about their family’s diet.”
As a baseline, the research team used the maximum SNAP allotment offered to a single person in Indiana as of October 2021, which was $250 per month. They divided this amount by day to determine what a person’s daily budget would be. The team then created a linear programming model that estimates product nutrition and price of items available within a nationwide grocery store chain in South Bend.
“ has found that people essentially make trade-offs based on the information they have to try to stretch their funds and maximize nutrition,” said Ronald Metoyer, professor of computer science and engineering and vice president and associate provost for teaching and learning. “Our idea for this study was to use computation to aggregate all the relevant information (eg inventory, prices and nutrient content) and optimize those choices.”
Researchers took into account the cost per serving of a meal and the different dietary guidelines for men and women aged 31 to 50, while minimizing the cost of the diet, wherever possible. Although they found that it was possible to create a realistic diet for women that fit the SNAP monetary allocation and the nutritional requirements of the DGA, the same could not be done for men.
The team also analyzed the trade-off between cost and nutritional value specifically for nutrients that Americans tend to over-consume: sodium, saturated fat and added sugars. To do this, they set aside the parameters of the DGA and chose only the cheapest food options to meet the SNAP budget. The researchers found a direct correlation between sodium and cost – as the cost of groceries decreases, the amount of sodium consumed increases.
Researchers also noted that the most difficult DGA parameters to meet on the SNAP budget are the daily intake requirements for vitamins and minerals.
“What we found is vitamins and minerals, it’s very difficult to meet the dietary guidelines,” said Joe Germino, a doctoral student in the Lucy Institute’s DIAL Laboratory who is advised by Chawla. “You have to make a conscious decision to go and find food items that are cheap enough and in line with your budget. It adds another layer of complexity to an already difficult problem when you live in a food desert.”
Census data 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 supermarket. Residents living in and around the area must consider the distance to full-service grocery stores as well as their access to transportation to purchase healthy foods.
These barriers are even more difficult to overcome for low-income families, which can create greater reliance on alternative food sources such as food pantries. Although the per capita budget for SNAP recipients has increased since this study was conducted, due to other economic constraints such as inflation researchers believe the findings still apply to those who rely on SNAP support today.
“The reason we chose South Bend is because we have areas that are considered food deserts and this lack of food access is happening within our own community,” said Annalisa Szymanski, a Lucy Graduate Scholar who Metoyer advises on her and co-. author of the study.
The study published in Frontiers in Big Data is just one way Notre Dame researchers are using technology to tackle this national challenge of food access and insecurity through the Food Information Networks (FINS) project. Led by Metoyer, FINS is funded by the National Food and Agriculture Institute. The project aims to fully understand the barriers to access to healthy food, develop technological supports, and deploy and study interventions in South Bend and Detroit.
The project will culminate in an app that uses optimization methods to suggest and recommend healthier food items to people based on their dietary goals and budget. In the spring, researchers will pilot a version of the app in Rum Village, a neighborhood of South Bend. The goal is to test the app to see how that solution helps overcome transport constraints. The pilot program will partner with local Walmart grocery stores.
“Through the pilot scheme, we’re testing to see if we promote different recommendations on healthier food products in the app, will that have an impact on how people eat? Or what if they know there is a healthier product for sale?” Szymanski said. “We want to see how this technology, with diet and budget goals in mind, can have a real impact on eating habits.”
The researchers are also looking at how the FINS project could leverage artificial intelligence, such as large language models, to create personalized dietary recommendations.
Contact: Brandi Wampler, associate director of media relations, 574-631-2632, brandiwampler@nd.edu
