What is the cost of a healthy diet? Using diet data from the UK Women's Cohort Study

Abstract

Healthy 18 Dietary pattern 19 Diet cost 20 UK W C Study 21 22Word count = 3028 23 ABSTRACT: 24 Background: 25A healthy diet is important to promote health and wellbeing whilst preventing chronic disease. 26However, the monetary cost of consuming such a diet can be a perceived barrier. This study will 27 investigate the cost of consuming a range of dietary patterns. 28 Methods: 29A cross sectional analysis, where cost of diet was assigned to dietary intakes recorded using a Food 30Frequency Questionnaire. A mean daily diet cost was calculated for seven data driven dietary 31 patterns. These dietary patterns were given a healthiness score according to how well they comply 32 with the UK Department of Health's Eatwell Plate guidelines. This study involved ~35000 women 33 recruited in the 1990s into the UK Women's Cohort Study. 34 Results: 35A significant positive association was observed between diet cost and healthiness of the diet (p for 36 trend >0.001). The healthiest dietary pattern was double the price of the least healthy, £6.63/day and 37 £3.29/day respectively. Dietary diversity, described by the patterns, was also shown to be associated 38

Towards a satiety map of common foods: Associations between perceived satiety value of 100 foods and their objective and subjective attributes

“…The results showed that foods perceived with the highest satiety value tended to be more costly. This corresponds to a recent examination of UK D H E P which showed that the healthiest foods were more costly compared to less healthy foods (Morris, Hulme, Clarke, Edwards, & Cade, 2014). Other research shows that nutrient rich foods are more expensive (Drewnowski, 2010).…”

Family Affluence and the Eating Habits of 11- to 15-Year-Old Czech Adolescents: HBSC 2002 and 2014

“…Socioeconomic disparities in the availability of healthy foods may be influenced by parents’ knowledge of nutrition [41] and food cost [16,55]. The literature has shown that parents with higher education and income levels have better knowledge of dietary guidelines and therefore have a greater positive impact on their children’s diets compared to parents of lower SES [17,41].…”

“…Unhealthy diets consisting of sugar-rich and fatty foods among children are also common in families with low parental education levels [1,14]. Healthy foods are frequently more expensive and are not often affordable for families with lower incomes [15,16], which may widen disparities in access to healthy diets [15]. …”

The food environment, its effects on dietary consumption, and potential for measurement within agriculture-nutrition interventions

“…A systematic review of cost-ofdiet studies globally found that healthy diets were, on average, approximately $10.50/week more expensive than less-healthy diets, and that this difference was similar across countries adjusting for purchasing power parity (Rao et al 2013). 4 In the UK, a recent study disaggregated diets into five categories of Bhealthfulness^and found that the healthiest diet was double the price of the least healthy diet (Morris et al 2014). In the US, there is an inverse relationship between energy density and energy cost, and refined grains, added sugars, and fats are much more affordable than the diet recommended by dietary guidelines (Drewnowski and Darmon 2005a;b).…”