The Food Is Trashy, But Dollar Stores Aren't Ruining Our Diets, Study Claims

Some good news for bargain hunters out there: New research shows that while the food bought at dollar stores is generally less healthy, customers’ diets aren’t suffering greatly as a result.

Scientists at Tufts University and the USDA-Economic Research Service collaborated for the study, which tracked the food purchasing habits of nearly 200,000 American families. They found that a growing number of people are buying food from dollar stores, particularly people with lower incomes. At the same time, the overall diet quality wasn’t significantly different between those who shop and don’t shop at these outlets.

Dollar stores have become a ubiquitous presence across the U.S. over the past few decades. Research has shown how these stores have reshaped the local economy, particularly in small towns. For the new study, the researchers wanted to get a better sense of how they’ve changed our diets.

To that end, they analyzed yearly data from a nationally representative sample of Americans’ household food purchases. They also used USDA data to rate the quality of people’s store-bought food.

According to the study, dollar store foods made up 3.4% of a household’s total calories in 2008, nearly doubling to 6.5% by 2020. People of color, people living in rural neighborhoods, and those with lower incomes were more likely to buy foods from dollar stores.

As other research shows, dollar store food purchases are less healthy than food bought elsewhere. These stores are less likely to carry fresh produce, for example, and more likely to have sweets, snacks, and other processed foods. But strangely enough, the quality of people’s diets didn’t shift much regardless of whether they ate dollar store food.

People who reported never buying foods at dollar stores had a healthy eating score of 50.5, for instance, whereas people who most shopped at these stores had a score of 46.3 (the scale goes to 100). On average, even the most frequent dollar store customers still got more than 90% of their at-home calories from somewhere else.

The findings suggest that the impact of these stores on Americans’ health is more complicated than assumed, the researchers say. People who shop at these stores seem to be changing their food-buying behavior in other ways. “Although foods purchased in dollar stores are less healthy, households may compensate through healthier purchases elsewhere,” they wrote in their paper, published Monday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The researchers note that some towns and neighborhoods have taken action to limit the growth of these stores. But given their findings, they argue that more study is needed to understand exactly how these businesses are shaping people’s eating habits.

“We need more data on the real effects of dollar stores on healthy eating as some communities may be putting the policy cart before the horse,” said senior study researcher Sean Cash, an economist at Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, in a statement from the university.