Here’s a math problem you actually want to solve: spend $1 on fruits and vegetables with your SNAP benefits, and get $1 more to buy even more nutritious food. Thanks to the Double Up Food Bucks program, families across Texas are turning small grocery budgets into bigger opportunities for better health.
The Double Up Food Bucks Texas program, led by the Sustainable Food Center, helps families make the most of their grocery budgets. The statewide initiative offers a dollar-for-dollar match on purchases of fresh fruits and vegetables for those enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal program that helps low-income families buy food.
By making fresh, nutritious food more affordable, Double Up Texas helps families stretch their food budgets and improve their diets, addressing food insecurity and promoting better health outcomes.
Right now, the program operates at more than 80 farmers’ markets, farm stands, mobile markets, and grocery stores across Texas. At these sites, shoppers use their SNAP benefits to buy eligible foods and then receive a dollar-for-dollar match that can be spent on fresh fruits and vegetables, either through extra tokens, instant discounts, or coupons depending on the location.
Sustainable Food Center first launched the program in Austin in 2012. It began as the state’s first SNAP incentive initiative and was expanded across the state in 2021. Last year, the program served more than 100,000 Texans.
“It’s a win-win-win,” Thornton explained. “Families get more money for produce. Retailers get additional sales. And Texas farmers see boosts in their profits.”
EHF recently invested $500,000 in a grant to Sustainable Food Center to expand the program to a wider network of grocery stores and farmers’ markets in rural East Texas and in under-resourced neighborhoods in Houston. It’s part of EHF’s recent $4.3 million in new grants that help community-based organizations address the foundation’s new priorities for change – including food and nutrition security.
“From innovative pilot projects to expanding successful programs, these grants are taking on consequential health issues in new and different ways,” says Dr. Ann Barnes, EHF’s president and CEO.
At EHF, we know that the real math of health goes beyond prescriptions and procedures. It’s about doubling access to healthy food, multiplying opportunities for well-being, and subtracting the barriers that keep Texans from living their healthiest lives. Programs like Double Up Texas show that when efforts address factors beyond medical care, the equation for better health adds up fast.
