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The USDA and Harvard School of Public Health both encourage healthy eating including plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and healthy proteins. Balanced diets are essential to living a healthy lifestyle and reducing the likelihood of disease. However, food scarcity makes a balanced diet difficult to achieve.

In 2020, 10.5 percent of households were food insecure. 38.3 million people in the US, including 6.1 million children, face food insecurity on a daily basis. Factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic have cause an uptick in food insecurity, especially for households with children. Children who grow up in food insecure households have an increased risk of chronic illnesses, behavioral problems and mental illnesses, as well as delayed development.

Unfortunately, in many cases it is far cheaper to buy unhealthy options than to opt for healthy ones. Our team combined these issues to create a solution in our app: Pantry Pals. Pantry Pals has the goal of encouraging healthy eating in a cost conscious manner along with the utilization of ingredients that the user already has in their home.

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