As the price of food continues to increase, the value (in real dollars) of food stamps is decreasing– Democrats in Congress are working to pass additional increases to the minimum food stamp benefit in the next few months. But how are these benefits calculated?

Originally, they were based on what is known as the Thrifty Food Plan, what is considered the minimum cost of a reasonably healthy diet. But the food stamp benefit is not recalculated each year. Rather, it is updated based on inflation, and the Thrifty Food Plan is then periodically updated so that it fits the current (maximum) food stamp benefit and resembles the current food preferences of Americans as closely as possible. How do they do this, one might ask?

Well, my advisor and primary author of the US Food Policy blog, Parke Wilde, and two awesome student colleagues at Tufts have put together a Thrifty Food Plan Calculator so anyone can figure out how much a healthy meal costs in their own way– to figure out the ideal mix of foods for health and taste given a food stamp budget. The actual Thrifty Food Plan was last updated in 2006 and the calculator uses the same information economists and nutritionists at USDA had to create the 2006 TFP. You can see if you would have chosen the same combination of foods as they did.

While the calculator is pretty awesome, unfortunately, most food stamp recipients don’t have access to such a personal nutrition planning tool. This cooking guide for the Thrifty Food Plan based on the old food pyramid and dietary guidelines has not been udpated for the new guidelines; and even those recipes may not be particularly helpful for culturally diverse populations. We are surprised when many low-income food stamp recipients do not choose healthy diets- we could do more to help them. And many of the most creative efforts to use evidence-based, public health approaches to education through the federal Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) program have been stifled by the USDA.