The study is funded by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and it brings together collaborators with expertise spanning nutrition, agricultural economics, and community health. Feng’s team includes Sean Cash, an associate professor at Tufts University; Abby Gold, a health and nutrition specialist at the University of Minnesota; Denise Holston, an associate professor and nutrition specialist at Louisiana State University; and Qingxiao Li, an assistant professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at LSU. The geographic focus on Minnesota and Louisiana is deliberate, pairing a largely rural Upper Midwest context with a Southern state where food access challenges and diet-related disease burdens are well documented.

The scale of dollar store expansion is striking. According to the data service company Statista, there were more than 39,000 dollar stores in the United States in 2025, an increase of 4,700 stores since 2021. Dollar General alone accounted for the highest number of locations in 2025, with 20,959 stores, more than Dollar Tree and Family Dollar combined. Perhaps most telling for food researchers: groceries made up more than 80 percent of Dollar General’s sales in 2025. While many retail sectors contracted or stagnated during the economic disruptions of 2020 and 2021, dollar stores grew aggressively, often opening in communities that larger grocery chains had abandoned.

That growth has made dollar stores the fastest-growing food-retail channel in rural America. A 2023 study led by Feng and published in the American Journal of Public Health examined dollar stores and food access for rural households across the United States. It found that from 2008 to 2020, dollar stores increased their share of rural household food purchases by 102.9 percent. In communities where the nearest supermarket may be a long drive away, the local dollar store can function as a de facto grocery store, and in some places it may be the only storefront selling food at all. That dual identity, as both a lifeline and a potential nutritional liability, sits at the center of the new research.

The public health concern is straightforward. Dollar stores tend to stock shelf-stable, heavily processed items: sugar-sweetened beverages, salty snacks, canned goods, and breakfast cereals, alongside limited protein options and little or no fresh produce. When such stores become a household’s primary food source, the resulting diet can skew toward calories dense in added sugars and sodium but low in nutrients. Feng’s earlier work, published this past fall in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, analyzed the healthfulness of foods purchased at dollar stores and documented these patterns in detail. The new study builds on that foundation by shifting from description to intervention, exploring concrete opportunities for nutritional improvement.

Feng frames the issue with nuance rather than alarm. Some shoppers, she notes, find dollar stores a convenient and affordable place to get food, especially those living far from traditional grocery stores. Others worry the stores may cause harm because they do not offer the healthiest options. The research team wants to understand how consumers actually incorporate this emerging retail format into their household food purchasing strategies, rather than assuming a single story of either benefit or harm. That consumer-centered perspective shapes the study’s methodology, which combines qualitative and computational approaches.

Technically, the project proceeds in three integrated phases. First, researchers will conduct interviews and focus groups with dollar store shoppers and community stakeholders in Minnesota and Louisiana, probing their perceptions and motivations as they work to fulfill their households’ dietary requirements. Second, the team will apply machine learning cluster analysis to food purchase data, a technique that groups households with statistically similar buying patterns and allows researchers to characterize distinct types of food purchase behavior. Each cluster can then be evaluated for healthfulness, and the strategies that consumers within healthier clusters use to maintain a nutritious diet with dollar store food can be identified and studied. Third, the team will translate those findings into educational resources designed to help low-income Americans achieve food and nutrition security and sustain better health over time.

The intervention phase will put those tools to the test. The researchers plan a pilot initiative using the educational resource toolkit with shoppers and other stakeholders in two communities in Minnesota and two in Louisiana. The toolkit is intended to improve understanding of nutrition, food affordability, and healthy shopping strategies, and the pilot may include workshops, community outreach programs, and cooking demonstrations, all carried out in collaboration with local organizations. This community-driven design reflects a deliberate choice: rather than prescribing solutions from outside, the team aims to build approaches that fit the real constraints and habits of dollar store shoppers, including tight budgets, limited transportation, and the practical realities of what is on the shelves.

The communities most affected by dollar store proliferation are also those with the least food retail choice. Feng notes that dollar store shopper demographics skew toward rural households, People of Color, and lower-income households, and that the data collected should help provide a well-rounded understanding of the dollar store phenomenon. Dollar stores have added a new dimension to food systems in all communities, but rural areas and lower-income communities with racial and ethnic minority households are especially impacted, both as customers and as sites of rapid store expansion. Understanding how these households navigate the trade-off between convenience, cost, and nutritional quality is essential for any policy or program that hopes to reduce diet-related health disparities.

The stakes extend beyond individual shopping carts. If dollar stores are now a structural pillar of food access for vulnerable populations, then improving what those stores sell, and how shoppers use them, could move the needle on nutrition insecurity at population scale. Feng’s goal, as she describes it, is to create a holistic and community-driven approach that helps dollar store shoppers fulfill their households’ need for healthy foods, make healthier choices, and ultimately contribute to reducing or eliminating nutrition insecurity. With insights gained through data collection and direct conversations with consumers, the team will develop tools to help shoppers stretch their food budget while using dollar stores as food retailers. If there is knowledge to be gained that promotes healthy eating with limited resources, Feng says, the team wants to share it. The three-year study promises to turn one of American retail’s most rapid expansions into one of its most closely examined public health experiments.

Subject of Research: The impact of dollar store food retail on household food purchases and nutrition security in rural and low-income American communities

Article Title: Assessing the fastest-growing food retailers—dollar stores

Article References: Assessing the fastest-growing food retailers—dollar stores. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: dollar stores, food retail, nutrition security, food access, rural communities, public health, USDA, Dollar General, diet quality, low-income households, machine learning, grocery shopping

The selection process behind these awards is grounded in the journal’s internal editorial governance rather than external popular vote. Nominated and eligible articles published in the prior year in JNEB are evaluated by members of the Journal Committee and the JNEB Board of Editors, who judge the outstanding contributions in each category. Lead authors of the winning and finalist works receive a monetary award, and the recognized articles are featured on the journal’s website, giving the winning research a prominent platform beyond its original publication. This structure is designed to reward both scientific excellence and practical utility in a field that sits at the intersection of behavioral science, public health, and education.

In the flagship Best Article category, the top honor went to a team led by Caitlyn B. Faul, MPH, RD, LDN, CDCES, together with Stephanie Jilcott Pitts, Eric E. Calloway, Hilary K. Seligman, Heidi Reis, Cheryl Webb Cherry, Irene E. Hatsu, Oyinlola Toyin Babatunde, Alexandra L. MacMillan Uribe, Jared T. McGuirt, and Rebecca A. Seguin-Fowler. Their winning article, titled A Meta-Ethnography to Determine Critical Constructs of Nutrition Security, tackles one of the most consequential conceptual shifts in contemporary nutrition policy: the move from measuring food security alone toward a fuller understanding of nutrition security. Meta-ethnography is a rigorous qualitative synthesis method that interprets findings across multiple qualitative studies, and by applying it to this domain the authors aimed to identify the critical constructs that define what it means for households and individuals to be nutritionally, not merely calorically, secure.

The significance of that work reflects a broader reorientation in American food policy discourse. Where food security has traditionally been assessed by access to sufficient calories, nutrition security emphasizes the consistent availability of foods and beverages that promote well-being and prevent diet-related chronic disease. A meta-ethnographic approach is technically demanding because it requires researchers to translate concepts across studies conducted in different settings with different populations, preserving the interpretive richness of the original qualitative work while producing a coherent synthesis. The award committee’s decision to recognize this article signals the field’s growing interest in frameworks that can guide practitioners and policymakers as they design programs intended to improve dietary quality rather than simply alleviate hunger.

The Best Article Finalist Award was presented to a large collaborative team whose article examined a policy question with immediate relevance to millions of American schoolchildren. Juliana F.W. Cohen, ScD, RD, along with Monica D. Zuercher, Dania Orta-Aleman, Leah E. Chapman, Christina A. Hecht, Kenneth Hecht, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, Deborah A. Olarte, Anisha I. Patel, Michele Polacsek, Marlene B. Schwartz, Lorrene D. Ritchie, and Wendi Gosliner, were honored for their article Impact of Deimplementing Universal Free School Meals: School Food Authority Perspectives. Deimplementation, the deliberate process of discontinuing an established practice, is an emerging focus in implementation science, and universal free school meals have been among the most widely debated nutrition policies of recent years. By gathering the perspectives of school food authorities, the entities responsible for operating school meal programs, the study captures the operational and practical consequences experienced on the ground when such programs are scaled back.

In the Best Research Brief category, the winning work came from a team led by Eliza Short, PhD, RDN, joined by Ji Li, James P. Selig, Kelsey Bounds, Brett Rowland, Bonnie Faitak, Jazmin Lane, Rosana Solis-Garcia, Holly C. Felix, Krista Langston, Pearl A. McElfish, Juan Mejia-Otera, Lauren Haggard-Duff, and Christopher R. Long. Their article, Medically Tailored Grocery Delivery for Food Pantry Clients with Diabetes, investigates an intervention model that sits at the frontier of food-is-medicine approaches. Medically tailored grocery programs adapt the foods delivered to clients to align with their clinical conditions, in this case diabetes, and deliver them through food pantry channels that already serve people experiencing food insecurity. Research briefs are a distinct article format in JNEB, designed to communicate focused studies concisely, and the recognition of this work highlights how compact study designs can illuminate interventions with direct clinical and programmatic implications.

The Best Research Brief Finalist Award went to Samantha M. Sundermeir, PhD, MS, RDN, and colleagues Mika Matsuzaki, Angela Zhang, Jane C. Obi, Joel Gittelsohn, and Megan R. Winkler for their article Characterizing the Consumer Food Environment of Dollar Stores and Exploring Differences by Neighborhood Racial Composition. Dollar stores have expanded rapidly across the United States and have become a significant source of groceries for many communities, particularly in rural areas and neighborhoods underserved by traditional supermarkets. Systematically characterizing the consumer food environment, the range, price, and quality of foods available to shoppers, within these stores, and then examining how those environments differ according to the racial composition of surrounding neighborhoods, addresses an important equity question in food access research. The study exemplifies the kind of environmental assessment work that underpins effective nutrition education and policy interventions.

The GEM category, dedicated to Great Educational Material, produced its own winner and finalist. The Best GEM Award was presented to Rebecca Brody, PhD, RD, LD, CNSC, Anca Cunningham, MS, RD, and Jason Stevens, DCN, RDN, for their article Prairietown Regional Medical Center: An AI-Driven Simulation for Teaching Leadership and Change Management to Nutrition Graduate Students. This work represents a notable convergence of nutrition education and emerging technology, using an artificial intelligence-driven simulation to immerse graduate students in realistic leadership scenarios. Change management, the structured approach to guiding organizations through transitions, is a competency that dietetics and nutrition professionals increasingly need as they lead program reforms in clinical and community settings, and simulation-based learning offers a low-risk environment in which students can practice these skills before applying them in professional practice.

The Best GEM Finalist Award recognized Jennifer A. Garner, PhD, RD, and coauthors Jennifer C. Shrodes, Katharine Garrity, Songzhu Zhao, Emmanuella Aboagye-Mensah, Amaris Williams, Guy Brock, Jennifer Hefner, Daniel M. Walker, and Joshua J. Joseph for Cooking Matters for Diabetes: A Curriculum to Support Diabetes Self-Management Among Individuals Facing Food Insecurity. Curricula of this kind translate behavioral nutrition science into structured, teachable programs, combining cooking skills with diabetes self-management education for populations where food insecurity complicates disease management. The dual recognition of this curriculum and the AI-driven simulation in the same category illustrates the breadth of educational innovation the GEM award is intended to celebrate, spanning community-based cooking education and technology-enhanced graduate training.

Congratulating the recipients, JNEB Editor-in-Chief Lauren Haldeman, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, said that the research recognized through these awards demonstrates the innovation, rigor, and dedication of the authors. As nutrition education continues to evolve to meet new challenges and opportunities, she noted, the evidence produced by these researchers is helping educators, practitioners, and communities make informed decisions that improve health outcomes, adding that the journal is proud to celebrate their contributions to the field. Taken together, the 2026 award portfolio paints a picture of a discipline actively grappling with the most pressing questions in food and health: how to define and measure nutrition security, how to manage the consequences of major school meal policy shifts, how food retail environments shape dietary equity, how food-is-medicine interventions can serve people managing chronic disease, and how the next generation of nutrition professionals can be trained with the aid of new technologies. The recognized articles are featured on the journal’s awards page, where readers can explore the full body of honored work.

Subject of Research: 2026 Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior awards recognizing outstanding nutrition education and behavior research and educational materials

Article Title: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior announces 2026 Best Article, Best Research Brief, and GEM awards

Article References: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior announces 2026 Best Article, Best Research Brief, and GEM awards. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, nutrition education, nutrition security, universal free school meals, food insecurity, medically tailored groceries, dollar stores, diabetes self-management, AI simulation, Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, research awards, Elsevier