Choosing to eat healthy seems simple, but for many paying higher costs for healthier foods may not always be an affordable option.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) studied the cost of making healthier food choices compared to the cost of making less healthy food choices and found that the former cost an additional $1.50 a day.
“People often say that healthier foods are more expensive, and that such costs strongly limit better diet habits,” said Mayuree Rao, lead author and junior research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH, in a press release. “But, until now, the scientific evidence for this idea has not been systematically evaluated, nor have the actual differences in cost been characterized.”
Using a combination of 27 studies from 10 countries with high-incomes, HSPH researchers evaluated the cost per serving and per day based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet.
The research compared healthier diets made up of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and fish to less healthy diets made up of refined grains, processed foods and fattier cuts of meat.
For some low-income families, an additional $550 a year for groceries may not be possible.
“This would represent a real burden for some families, and we need policies to help offset these costs,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor at HSPH and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the research, in a press release. “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.”
The British Medical Journal Open published the research on Dec. 5, coinciding with a debate being held in Congress about a farm bill that could lead to billions of dollars in cuts to federal food-assistance. No decision on the bill has been made yet.
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