Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Americans can meet their nutritional needs on just $9 a day, claiming that one health meal “can cost around $3.”
According to the Consumer Price Index, food prices continued to rise in December, climbing 0.7%, which was the largest month-over-month increase since October 2022. Produce prices jumped 0.5% while coffee spiked 1.9%. Beef rose 1% last month and 16.4% from the year before.
On Wednesday, Rollins appeared on NewsNation, where Connell McShane noted the government’s revamped food pyramid and asked how the increase in grocery prices could affect some Americans’ ability to eat healthy and affordably.
“How does costs play into this?” McShane asked. “And I guess the reason I ask is that I’m thinking back to the CPI report that just came out, and although inflation overall, as you know, kind of held steady, 2.7% an annual rate on the consumer level, we did see grocery [prices], especially month to month, jumping up. And so it still costs people a lot to go to the grocery store. When is that gonna change?”
“The cost of groceries are actually coming down,” Rollins claimed. “There was a little blip at the end of the year because it’s the holiday, and a lot of people are spending a lot more money at the grocery store. But the actual overall numbers are coming down, from eggs, to chicken, to pork, to milk, to broccoli.”
Rollins then pivoted to Americans “who are living on the margins” and said the new food pyramid can be adhered to without spending more money on food.
“We’ve run over a thousand simulations,” Rollins said. “It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a, 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.”
Watch above via NewsNation.
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