Carefully planning your weekly shop can help save you money
“Healthy food now costs three times as much as junk, study shows,” The Independent reports. It also reports a sharper rise in the cost of fruit and veg over the past decade compared to other types of foods.
This news story is based on research which looked at changes in the price of 94 food items in the UK in the decade from 2002 to 2012. It found that in this period foods classified as healthier (such as fruit and vegetables) were more expensive per calorie than foods high in fat or sugar. The healthy foods increased more sharply in price over time, and in 2012 were three times more expensive on average per calorie than unhealthy foods.
Prices were assessed per 1,000 calories, as this is a standard way of assessing food poverty. However, as healthier foods tend to have a much lower energy density (fewer calories per gram) than less healthy foods, this measure may not always give a realistic comparison of different food choices you might buy. For example, you would need to buy and eat around 30 cucumbers to gain around 1,000 calories, compared to about one 200g packet of ginger nut biscuits (about 20 biscuits).
Given the recent economic climate and also concerns about diet-related health conditions, this is likely to be of interest to policy makers, as well as the public. This sort of information could contribute to discussions about whether changing food pricing could motivate people to eat more healthily.
How to eat well for cheap
One of NHS editors, who took up the NHS Choices ‘Eat4Cheap’ challenge, managed to eat a healthy diet on just £3 a day. In the same challenge a family of five managed to cut £100 from their weekly food budget while still eating healthily.
Healso calculated you can eat the recommended five a day of fruit and vegetables for as little as 50p a day; the cost of a standard mid-morning snack.
The researchers report that diet related ill health has been estimated to cost the NHS £5.8 billion per year – more than smoking, alcohol, or physical inactivity. Although consuming healthier foods is linked to better health outcomes, many people in the UK do not meet healthy eating recommendations. The researchers describe one survey which found that 39% of people rated price as the most important factor in their food choice compared to just 9% who considered a food’s healthiness to be most important.
So if healthier food is more expensive, this could be a significant barrier to people eating more healthily.
The researchers used statistical tests to see if the prices of the “more healthy” and “less healthy” foods, or different Eatwell categories differed over time.
What were the results of the study?
Average prices for both more and less healthy food rose by 35% between 2002 and 2012, from £3.87 per 1,000kcal to £5.21 per 1,000kcal.
Price per 1,000kcal was always highest for fruit and veg, lowest for starchy foods (bread, rice, potatoes and pasta), and second lowest for foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar. The price of starchy foods per 1,000kcal stayed roughly the same between 2002 and 2012, while the other groups showed price rises. Each of the food categories, with the exception of fruit and veg, contained both foods classified as more healthy and some as less healthy.
Healthier foods increased in price per 1,000kcal more rapidly than less healthy foods. Healthier foods increased in price by an average of 17 pence per 1,000kcal per year while less healthy foods rose seven pence per 1,000kcal per year.
In 2012 the average price of more healthy foods was about three times higher – £7.49 for 1,000kcal compared to £2.50 for 1,000kcal of less healthy foods.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that “Since 2002, more healthy foods and beverages have been consistently more expensive than less healthy ones, with a growing gap between them.” They say that this trend may worsen social inequalities in health, and affect the population’s health as a whole. They also suggest that the findings support routinely monitoring food prices to inform possible economic policy responses.
Conclusion
The current study has found that the price of food per calorie in the UK between 2002 and 2012 was consistently higher for healthier food than for less healthy food. The suggestion is that this may affect people’s food choices, and therefore their long term health.
The method the researchers used took advantage of routinely available government data on food prices and nutritional content. This means it would not require collection of new data to keep track of healthy and unhealthy food prices per calorie.
There are some limitations to the findings, which the authors themselves discuss, including the small number of foods and drinks they assessed, as they were restricted to using those listed in the UK Consumer Price Index between 2002 and 2012. However, the index includes commonly bought items.
They assessed price per calorie, rather than price per unit weight, as this is the way international organisations assess food poverty. Also dietary recommendations are given in terms of calories rather than weight of food. However, one of the reasons for less healthy foods to be classed as less healthy is that they have high levels of calories per gram. So it is perhaps not surprising that less healthy food tends to costs less per calorie than more healthy foods such as fruit and veg, which tend to have fewer calories per gram. Building on this research to estimate the price of healthy and unhealthy diets as a whole, or also presenting prices per weight could help in giving an idea of the practical day to day impact of these differences.
This study has added another layer to the information available about food prices in the UK, linking it to nutritional value. Given the recent economic climate and also concerns about diet-related health conditions, this is likely to be of interest to both the public and policy makers