Bulwark Takes - Jared Tried the White House’s $3 Diet

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

The Trump White House says Americans can eat healthy meals for about $3 a serving. To test that claim, Jared Poland tried living on the administration’s guidance for three days. He also speaks with Colleen Heflin, a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University who studies food and nutrition policy and social welfare policy.

Hey, it's Jared Pullen with the Bullwork. Last week, our managing out of their Sam Stein heard about the new diet the USDA Secretary was talking about. He asked me to give it a try, and I agreed. The rules were simple. Eat for three days on a total budget of $27. In other words, $3 a meal. So as a reminder, or in case you were lucky to miss it, this all started after the White House laid out its new food guideline.

They said, eat more full-fat dairy, more butter, red meat, and stay away from sugar. And then USDA Secretary Brooke Rawlins did an interview with new food. Nation. And in the interview, the news anchor asked her, how does cost factor into it? Are we actually asking Americans, especially those who are living on the margins, are we asking them to spend more on their diet? And the answer to that is no. We've run over a thousand 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. Several members of Congress pushed back, arguing that the idea of a well-rounded nutritious meal

costing just $3 is out of touch with reality. Was it? I was going to find out. I wrote a list, and I drove down to the Aldi food market where I knew I would be able to stretch my dollars as far as possible. Here's what I was able to buy. Five pounds of chicken breast for $12.85. Canola oil cooking spray for $2.29.

Long grain white rice for $1.99. A salt-free seasoning mix for $1.95. 20 fajita tortillas for $1.55. one bag of frozen broccoli for $1.79, salt for $67, bananas for $65. With tax, the total came out to $23.97. That left me just about $3 under budget.

I then went home and began meal prepping for the week. I'm going to start cooking up some chicken, make some rice in the instapot, and it's sort of going to prep the meals for the coming days. That way it's a little easier for me to make. because it'll be a bit time-consuming to cook all of this. So we go ahead and get that out of the way, so all I gotta do is really eat it over the next three days.

Sam always is one of us to do a cooking video, and he's finally getting what he wants. So meal number one, we got our tortillas, and we have our chicken and rice, and we have our banana. So the rice is taking up a lot. The chicken tastes good. I do wish I had some hot sauce or something.

Okay, so it's lunchtime. We've got our chicken, broccoli, and rice. I'm going to throw this in the microwave. The tortillas cooking. Yummy. It is now dinner time. I have made my rice, my tortillas, my chicken, my broccoli. I will note that the broccoli, huge improvement from what I had this morning.

It was really dry this morning, but the broccoli actually helped quite a bit. Okay. That's one day in the books. I'm not going to lie. I kind of have a headache. I also feel quite exhausted. It's not like I worked out or anything in the day. I'm just tired.

I'm not feeling all that great currently. To learn more about how I was feeling, I spoke with Colleen Heflin, a professor at Syracuse University, who studies food and nutrition policy. You know, these food plans are designed to be nutritionally adequate and meet all the. dietary recommendations. It's not quite clear to me that you met you the dietary recommendations

in terms of your fruit and vegetable consumption. And so those types of things, whether you're getting adequate protein, whether you're, you know, getting enough fiber, can definitely have a toll on your physical health as well. I told her all about the $3 meal challenge and what a great boss Sam is. It turns out Sam was actually a little late to this idea, but I haven't told that yet. So people used to do a version of what you did and they would do what's called the Snap Challenge and they would try to eat for a week or longer and follow the Thirsty Food Plan. And this used to be something that was sort of a more popular thing to do. And it tends to really have an effect on people and change how they think about food insecurity.

and sort of, you know, increase people's motivation to address the issue. So I'm interested, like, if that has changed your thinking at all, this. I would say that it has. I was actually, so I went to the, all the, like, food market because I had always heard that all these, like a good budget store. And so I went in there with sort of a list that I made out of what I thought I could get. And I was actually shocked with the amount of chicken I could get. Like, I got five pounds of boneless chicken, like skinless chicken breast for $12.

And I was, like, kind of shocked by that. But then when I started looking for the olive oil, I was like, oh, I can't afford that. Then I tried to do butter and was like, oh, I can only buy it in a four pack. That's still not in the budget. And then I ended up doing the canola oil, which doesn't really have much or any nutritional value, it seemed. But having to prep those meals out, because I didn't cook them every. single time. It was like I would cook for the whole day and then eat it. And luckily, I was able to afford some seasoning, but I realized there's a lot of things that I typically would eat, like,

condiments, different spices, just the way I go about cooking on that limited budget, I'm having to figure out what I can cut out and still get a meal that's seemingly somewhat enjoyable. The broccoli actually was probably the best part, I will admit. It was quite refreshing. I did one meal without the broccoli. It was like never doing that again. It was just super dry. I was like, I can't do that. But it has opened my eyes to what people are having to do every day. I mean, growing up, I remember my mom would like get hamburger helper. And like, she told me what her budget was when I was a kid.

Like, it was tight. Like, I think she was spending a little less than $100 for family of four, like, every two weeks. And was like really stretching the dollar. And there's people that are having to live on a lot less than that now. And in today's economy, it's like, quite difficult to do that. So back to the challenge. Day two was fine,

except that I ran out of my precious frozen broccoli, but thankfully I had those three dollars left, so I got another bag, which I was grateful. And then I went to bed, but I still wasn't feeling well. Day three had a pretty hectic workday covering what was happening at Davos,

and because of that, I ate breakfast at my desk, which I had a bowl of chicken, rice and broccoli as well as a banana. I then went home where I ate lunch, which was a tortilla, chicken, broccoli, and rice. And then I did a little bit more work before making my dinner, which was, again, chicken, broccoli, and rice with a tortilla. Overall, I would say eating $3 meals every day, the same ingredients. It gets tiring, not. because like the meal is particularly bad or because I feel like I'm hungry.

It's just kind of exhausting and it makes it like feel like a chore. Yeah. So many of us experience a lot of joy and satisfaction when we eat. Maybe it's part of our cultural heritage. It's a community thing. We do with others. It's social bonding. And so when we are eating a minimal diet, oftentimes that's monotonous and doesn't have

a lot of taste and enjoying it, that can physically make us, you know, less excited. It can make it harder to have that same sort of relationship. You know, you don't really invite people over. It sounds like you ate by yourself. You're sort of doing what you have to eat. So that has like a mental toll also. There's another part of the equation, though, that I didn't have to face. that a lot of Americans do.

I paid for my chicken, my tortillas, broccoli, and a few other things. But I didn't have to figure out how to pay my bills. When households are struggling with a difficulty affording food, they're often going to make trade-offs with other essential expenses. For many households, they're going to prioritize paying for rents in utilities, certainly in the winter, in a hard winter like we're having currently. Those are going to be above food. But they're going to trade off things like medical care, prescription drug refills, delay going to the doctor.

And when people talk about affordability crisis, they're really talking about the rising costs across multiple sectors. And so when housing and energy prices go up, it means there's less money for food in the household. So on the second day of this challenge, Brooke Rollins did another interview where she said this. So just about an hour ago, I saw new numbers that were run a full day, meaning three full square meals and a snack is about $15.64 cents. $15 and 64. That's all three meals and a snack. So we'll be talking more about that in the coming days and weeks. Part of me sort of cringed at the criticism that I got because it wasn't what I meant. meant, and I grew up with a single mom in a really small town and certainly never meant to be flippant. But I also think that the left, or those that were attacking me, perhaps know that

this is an issue that 90% of Americans agree on. Talking to Professor Heflin, she said it wasn't clear what models Rollins was using for her math. So we reached out to the USDA to clarify. A spokesperson sent us an outline of the serving sizes that are part of the new nutritional guidelines and said it's all flexible. They said simulations that contain proteins, whole milk, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables, as well as whole grain, butter, and olive oil can cost the consumer less than $10 a day. Maybe it's because of what I bought and where I bought it, but that didn't quite work out for me. I shared the USDA response with Professor Hufflin. She said the agency usually breaks things down into four meal plans based on different budget models. The thrifty food plan, which costs the least,

means relying on canned or frozen fruits and vegetables, not fresh produce. We asked the USDA if they're still going to calculate things this way, and as of the time that we filmed this video, they still haven't gotten back to us. What do you think the administration should be talking about instead of these $3 meals when it comes to food insecurity in America? I think we should be measuring food insecurity. This administration has suspended measurement of the food security measure. And so we're not even going to be able to know at a national level who is food insecure in our community.

And we are implementing some drastic new provisions as part of the one big, beautiful bill, that will reduce access to SNAP benefits and create what is really a historic change in funding for SNAP from the fact. from the federal level to state and local governments, which is going to really cause some profound fiscal problems at local levels moving forward. And this is in a time when food costs in inflation and affordability for many households is really their number one concern. In 2024, roughly 47.9 million people lived in food and secure households.

That number is from the USDA Economic Research. service. If you enjoyed this video, give it a like, leave a comment, and consider subscribing to the bulwark. We'll see you next time.