Eunyoung Myung was scanning the shopping habits of families across upstate New York when a pattern emerged: low-income parents, juggling young children and limited bus routes, were quietly pioneering a solution to one of America's persistent health inequities. They were buying fresh produce online.
The finding, published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, upends a common assumption about how poor families shop for groceries. Researchers from Cornell University studied over 450 participants in New York's Double Up Food Bucks program, which pairs SNAP benefits with matching dollars for fresh fruit and vegetable purchases. What they discovered challenges the notion that online shopping is simply a luxury convenience—for many struggling families, it's an access strategy born of necessity.
Nearly half of the survey participants purchased fruits and vegetables online through store websites or services like Instacart, according to the research. The families most likely to shop this way were those with young children or transportation challenges—the very people for whom a weekly trip to the farmer's market or grocery store can feel impossible. "For families with young children and limited time, or transportation challenges, it's really hard for them to get to the store regularly," said Myung, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell's Action Research Collaborative. "Our study shows that these daily life barriers actually matter."
The Double Up Food Bucks program, administered by the Buffalo-based nonprofit Field & Fork Network, operates across 53 counties in upstate New York. It works by matching every dollar SNAP participants spend on fresh produce—up to $20 a day—with additional credit available on loyalty cards, coupons, or tokens at farmers markets. Since 2022, Cornell researchers have partnered with Field & Fork to increase enrollment and evaluate how the program simultaneously stretches tight food budgets while improving family nutrition.
The research arrives at a critical moment. Rising produce costs have long deterred low-income families from choosing fruits and vegetables over cheaper, shelf-stable alternatives. But as Tashara Leak, the study's co-author and an associate professor at Cornell, emphasized, affordability alone isn't enough. "People assume that if you have limited resources, you're not shopping for groceries online, but we find that's not true," Leak said. "And nationally, people are really interested in how we can support SNAP families with online grocery shopping to address accessibility, but there hasn't been a lot of research in this area."
Lisa French, CEO of Field & Fork Network, framed the finding in broader terms. "If people don't have the time or transportation to access a nutrition incentive program, it doesn't matter how affordable you can make someone's groceries," she said. "The most impactful programs are the ones that can meet SNAP users where and how they shop."
The research also arrives as federal policy shifts threaten to deepen food insecurity. Upcoming changes will place greater responsibility on states to fund SNAP benefits, squeezing already-thin budgets even as need persists. For researchers like Leak, the urgency is clear: policymakers must figure out how to get fresh food into SNAP families' homes, not through assumption or convenience, but through the real-world pathways these families actually use.