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Eating Healthy Is Cheaper Than You ThinkBy Alexandra Sifferlin @acsifferlin Dec. 05, 2013 12 Comments

The smart people at the Harvard School of Public Health(HSPH) have crunched the numbers and it’s official: thehealthiest diets cost just $1.50 more than unhealthy diets.

While cost is an issue in when it comes to adding more freshproduce and leaner meats such as fish in your daily diet,researchers of a new study published in the BMJ say that fewstudies have actually evaluated how much more expensive ahealthier diet might be.

So the HSPH team conducted a meta-analysis of 27 studiesfrom 10 higher income countries that compared price pointsfor healthy and less healthy diets. They studied the pricedifferences per serving and per 200 calories for a variety ofspecific foods, as well as prices per day and per 2,000 calories,which is the average daily recommended caloric intake for U.S. adults.

The results confirm that healthier fare, like fruits, veggies and fish are more expensive thanunhealthy foods like processed meals and snacks and refined grains. That’s because current foodpolicies support inexpensive but high volume production, and favor easily manufactured andprocessed foods that provide more profit per unit for the food industry.

However, swapping out some of these less expensive, and less healthy foods, for fresher andmore nutritious ones added up to only about $1.50 more per day.

That might not be a problem for some, but the study authors acknowledge that people with lowerincomes may not be able to afford the added cost. But, they hope, the small difference may putmore nutritious foods within reach of more people, if food programs aren’t as deterred by the perceived high cost of eating better.“While healthier diets did cost more, the difference was smaller than many people might have expected. Over the course of a year, $1.50[per] day more for eating a healthy diet would increase food costs for one person by about $550 per year. This would represent a realburden for some families, and we need policies to help offset these costs,” said senior study author Dariush Mozaffarian, an associateprofessor at HSPH and Harvard Medical School.

Ultimately, however, the researchers suggest that production systems that make healthy foods more economical to produce, andtherefore are more in line with processed food prices, are necessary. That way, healthier foods may become more accessible, health carecosts for chronic diseases related to poor diets may also start to drop.

Alexandra Sifferlin @acsifferlinAlexandra Sifferlin is a writer and producer for TIME Healthland. She is a graduate from the Northwestern University Medill Schoolof Journalism.

TIME

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