Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has a dinner suggestion for Americans looking to save money on groceries: a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, and a corn tortilla.
Rollins said the Department of Agriculture has “run over 1,000 simulations” to test how Americans can eat in line with the “Make America Healthy Again” dietary suggestions on a budget. Her comments come days after the Trump administration gave the nationwide dietary guidelines a reboot, encouraging Americans to center their diets around whole foods, add more protein to their meals, and eat less added sugar.
“While we’re asking Americans to reconsider what they’re eating, 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,” Rollins said in a NewsNation interview.
“We’ve run over 1000 simulations, it can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing. And so there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money,” she added.
Rollins said some proteins, such as beef, are ticking up in price, but called the grocery list item an “outlier” and argued that “most things are coming down.”
Although it fluctuated in the first couple of months of 2025, beef prices have been increasing since May 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
PRODUCER PRICES ROSE TO 3% THROUGH NOVEMBER AS INFLATION LINGERS
The data also show that the consumer price index, which measures the price of meats, poultry, fish, and eggs for urban consumers, hit a high in March 2025, then fell by several points through June, before slightly climbing again through December.
Rollins’s budget-friendly meal suggestion mirrors President Donald Trump’s tactic of telling Americans to buy “two dolls instead of 30 dolls” in late April to account for possible personal budgetary effects of his tariff policies.
