By the tip of this summer season, the Division of Agriculture will launch a brand new iteration of the Thrifty Meals Plan, a little-known however vastly influential doc that impacts hundreds of thousands of People’ every day lives.
The plan quantifies the minimal sum of money wanted for a weight loss plan that conforms to federal vitamin tips. That determine is then used to set budgets for all kinds of presidency initiatives, from navy household stipends to the Supplemental Diet Help Program, or SNAP, which was previously often called the meals stamps program and helps 38 million low-income People pay for groceries.
It’s essential that the Thrifty Meals Plan proceed to incorporate a sturdy function for frozen meals — and thereby protect the flexibility of SNAP recipients to buy them. Not solely are frozen meals cheaper and extra handy than their contemporary counterparts, they’re typically extra nutritious.
For many years, People have been implored to eat more healthy — whether or not it’s a grade-school well being trainer speaking concerning the significance of consuming loads of contemporary fruit and veggies or docs on tv encouraging portion management.
These messages have the very best of intentions. However following that recommendation hasn’t at all times been sensible, particularly for low-income People. Greater than 6 in 10 SNAP recipients say price is a barrier to accessing wholesome meals. It’s hardly affordable to anticipate a household dwelling paycheck to paycheck to splurge on contemporary, organically grown produce on the native farmer’s market — if there even is an area farmer’s market.
Luckily, it doesn’t take an outsize sum of money or time to eat wholesome.
Frozen meals, for instance, are fairly inexpensive — and more healthy than folks notice. Vegetables and fruit are frozen virtually instantly after harvest, locking in key vitamins and stopping spoilage throughout storage and transportation. In line with analysis from the College of California, Davis, and the College of Georgia, the dietary worth of frozen fruit and veggies is the same as, and in some circumstances higher than, fresh-stored produce.
Frozen meals are additionally simple to arrange. Then again, getting ready made-from-scratch meals takes plenty of time. In reality, SNAP recipients report that the No. 1 barrier to maintaining a healthy diet is an absence of time.
In the present day’s consumers can now discover loads of nutritionally balanced — and portion-controlled — meals within the frozen meals aisle that take only a few minutes to prepare dinner. Or they’ll mix contemporary and frozen elements in the identical meal, equivalent to together with some quick-steam frozen greens alongside a freshly ready entrée. Over 70 p.c of customers combine and match frozen meals with contemporary elements, in accordance with a recent study by the American Frozen Meals Institute and FMI.
Frozen meals aren’t simply extra handy to prepare dinner; they’re additionally accessible. That’s essential as a result of 19 p.c of SNAP recipients say an absence of transportation to the grocery retailer makes it more durable to eat wholesome. Many People reside in rural areas the place the closest grocery store is an hour or extra away. However practically each bodega and greenback retailer within the nation has a frozen meals part. So folks dwelling in meals deserts can typically discover frozen meals with ease.
Lastly, frozen meals permit SNAP recipients to stretch their advantages additional. Frozen meals are likely to price much less per serving and keep edible for longer intervals of time than contemporary ones. That’s excellent news not only for folks’s wallets however for the planet, because it reduces meals waste.
When federal officers replace the Thrifty Meals Plan, they have to acknowledge that frozen meals are essential to households’ capability to increase the attain of their meals greenback and eat nutritiously. Doing so will be certain that hundreds of thousands of People proceed to have entry to wholesome meals.
Alison Bodor is the president and CEO of the American Frozen Meals Institute, which represents the nation’s frozen meals and beverage makers.
