Healthy eating only costs $1.50 more per day

Bad news for those who blame their poor eating habits on the high price of healthy food: research has shown that the healthiest diets cost only $1.50 per day more than the least healthy diets.

Of course, for low-income families, such a cost could prove to be a burden, but the researchers say it’s well worth the price compared with the health costs of eating an unhealthy diet.

The findings are based on research from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), which is claimed to be the most comprehensive comparison to date of the cost of healthy foods and diets patterns vs less healthy ones.

“People often say that healthier foods are more expensive and that such costs strongly limit better diet habits,” said lead author Mayuree Rao, a junior research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH.

“But, until now, the scientific evidence for this idea has not been systematically evaluated, nor have the actual differences in cost been characterised.”

HSPH researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 27 existing studies from 10 high-income countries that included price data for individual foods and for healthier vs less healthy diets. They evaluated the differences in prices per serving and per 200 calories for particular types of foods, and prices per day and per 2000 calories (the United States Department of Agriculture’s recommended average daily calorie intake for adults) for overall diet patterns. Both prices per serving and per calorie were assessed because prices can vary depending on the unit of comparison.

The researchers found that healthier diet patterns (diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and nuts) cost more than unhealthy diets (those rich in processed foods, meats and refined grains). On average, a day’s worth of the most healthy diet patterns cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy ones.

The researchers hypothesised that unhealthy diets may cost less because food policies have focused on the production of inexpensive, high-volume commodities, which has led to “a complex network of farming, storage, transportation, processing, manufacturing and market capabilities that favour sales of highly processed food products for maximal industry profit”.

They suggest that creating a similar infrastructure to support the supply of healthier foods might help increase availability - and decrease prices - of healthier diets.

“This research provides the most complete picture to date on true cost differences of healthy diets,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, the study’s senior author and associate professor at HSPH and Harvard Medical School.

“While healthier diets did cost more, the difference was smaller than many people might have expected. Over the course of a year, $1.50/day more for eating a healthy diet would increase food costs for one person by about $550 per year. This would represent a real burden for some families, and we need policies to help offset these costs. On the other hand, this price difference is very small in comparison to the economic costs of diet-related chronic diseases, which would be dramatically reduced by healthy diets.”

‘Do Healthier Foods and Diet Patterns Cost More than Less Healthy Options? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’ was published online in BMJ (British Medical Journal) Open on 5 December 2013.