President Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary has been mocked after boasting that the government devised a new way for Americans to eat for just $3 a meal amid a nationwide affordability crisis.
Brooke Rollins claimed in a TV interview that her team had “run over 1,000 simulations” to find the most optimal nutritious dinner on a shoestring.
All of that work, she told NewsNation, led to a major finding: “It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing.”
Appearing on the network to promote the administration’s new “Make America Healthy Again” push, which urges people to eat less sugar and ultra-processed food, Rollins argued her approach would “save the average American consumer money,” even as she conceded that beef remains pricey.
Within hours, her meager menu was being ridiculed across social media as completely out of touch. “Even a dystopia would say ‘damn, that’s dystopian,’” wrote one X user.
Another posted, “I’m glad they ran a thousand simulations to figure out one chicken one broccoli one tortilla and the other thing,” with a third saying Rollins’ brag of 1,000 simulations to land on such a miserly plate was the “most insulting part,” and a fourth adding, “You can do this in Excel using solver in like 45 minutes.”
Several X users—including the Ways and Means Committee Democrats and Rep. Ted Lieu—used AI to create tragic-looking empty plates featuring Rollins’ suggested ingredients.
Others contrasted the meager plates with lavish seafood spreads at Trump donor events, and one viral edit simply scribbled “One Other Thing” on an empty section of the dish.
After widespread mockery over Rollins’ suggested meal, a Department of Agriculture spokesperson sent out a list of other recommended foods they said could be used to make a meal costing around $3, including frozen vegetables and fruit, eggs, canned tuna, and whole grains, among other things. “Simulations” found that those items, along with others, provide “hundreds of thousands of meal options” in the same price range, the USDA said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
The beleaguered president has tried to wave away the cost-of-living squeeze, regularly dismissing affordability as a “hoax,” even while defending the very tariffs economists say are helping to keep prices high.
Repeated polling now shows his approval on the economy at its lowest point across both presidencies, with barely a third of Americans giving him passing marks and roughly half blaming him for a cost-of-living crisis they say is the worst they have seen.
Food is at the sharp end of that pain. Federal data show grocery inflation has outpaced overall price rises in the past year, with key staples like meat and dairy up sharply.
A report released last month found the share of households experiencing food insecurity had climbed to its highest level in more than a decade, with children in low-income homes hit hardest.
With the Rollins backlash tapping straight into Trump’s worsening political problem on affordability, some noted it appeared to be part of a wider plan by the administration to lower people’s standard of living.
Ahead of the Christmas season, the president urged parents to buy their children fewer toys.
Worse still for American consumers is the news that Trump’s aggressive tariff wall—now covering almost all imports and pushing average U.S. duties to levels not seen since the 1930s—has retailers warning of more price hikes on the way.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Agriculture for comment.
