A global project analysing access to healthy food has led to national changes and initiated conversations into how affordable healthy food is across the world by highlighting nutrition insecurity.
The intention behind the study, which concludes in August, is to provide a metric that can be used to pinpoint differences between causes of malnutrition, such as costs and incomes, to create solutions. The results have already been used by numerous researchers and governments to track food access.
Will Masters, director of the project and Professor of Food Policy and Economics at Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said: “I’m just stunned by the speed of adoption.
- Brain function affected by diets high in fat and sugar
- Study links sugary drinks to increased risk of mouth cancer
- Sugary drinks may raise type 2 diabetes risk by changing gut bacteria
“For the first time, governments are measuring whether people have access to the biological requisites of an active and healthy life.”
A healthy diet consists of a balance between multiple food groups to ensure we consume enough calories and nutrients. The Healthy Diet Basket dietary standard used by the researchers to evaluate diet costs was based on dietary guidelines from countries across the globe.
The researchers discovered that the lowest possible cost of a healthy diet on average was $3.68 per person. The extreme poverty line that year was $2.15.
Anna Herforth, lead author and co-director of Food Prices for Nutrition, said: “The indicator captures an implicit consensus on what countries around the world agree that people need for healthy diets.
“The importance of meeting dietary needs has been recognised for a long time, but measuring whether people can actually do that has been elusive until now.”
Herforth added: “Many people in the world who are counted as ‘non-poor’ still can’t afford to meet the basic requirements for a healthy diet.”
Worldwide, buying a healthy diet of the cheapest foods is still unattainable for 2.8 billion people. Masters explained: “For many people, even if they put all their resources into buying food, they wouldn’t have enough to meet dietary standards for lifelong health.”
- Research highlights the impact of healthy and less healthy plant foods on heart health
- White packaged bread and similarly inflammatory foods linked to colon cancer risk
- Ultra-processed foods tied to greater risk of depression and anxiety
According to Masters, the project found that “farmers and food traders can deliver the products needed for a healthy diet at a roughly similar cost in most of the world. Malnutrition happens because the poorest third of the world can’t afford to buy enough of the vegetables, fruits, dairy, and fish or other animal source foods needed for health, and the rest of us all too often consume other foods instead.”
The researchers plan to work with food providers in Africa to help provide healthy foods at a low cost and to support governments and organisations globally in providing populations with more affordable healthy diets.
Masters concluded: “People have talked about affordability for decades. Now we have a practical way to measure it. The next step is using those data to guide actions, and bring healthy diets within reach for everyone.”
