Abstract
Unhealthy diets are recognized as a major risk factor for many diseases. The decrease in costs of industrialized products, as well as the possible misinformation about a healthy diet, has led to new behaviors in the dietary patterns of the pediatric population. The costs of dietary patterns have not been estimated in our population, so the objective of this study was to determine the cost associated with dietary patterns in Mexican children and adolescents, hypothesizing that a healthy diet is not necessarily more economically expensive. This study analyzed data from a population-based cross-sectional study of healthy children and adolescents in Mexico City. Data were collected from a food frequency questionnaire and the meal cost of habitual food shopping. Eating patterns were obtained by using principal component analysis. A micro-costing technique was performed to obtain the direct costs of each pattern. When comparing the healthy pattern with the transition and non-healthy patterns, it was observed that there were no statistically significant differences between the dietary patterns (p = 0.8293). The cost of the healthy pattern only takes up 16.6% of the total biweekly income of a salaried Mexican. In this study, no differences were observed between the costs of a healthy and a less healthy diet.
Highlights
Non-healthy diets are widely recognized as a determinant risk factor in the development of chronic, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes, type2 mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancer that greatly contribute to the global load of NCDs in different populations [1,2]
Based on the above considerations, and due to our country’s lack of information in this field, as well as the epidemics of obesity in our population, the present study aims to determine the cost associated with dietary patterns in Mexican children and adolescents, posing the hypothesis that a healthy diet is not necessarily a more economically expensive one
This study demonstrated that the average cost of consumption dietary patterns is This studysignificant; demonstrated thatfound the average cost of consumption patterns is not not statistically it was that the difference betweendietary the most expensive statistically significant; it was found that the difference between the most expensive and and the least expensive dietary pattern was that of MXN 41.26 (USD 1.95)
Summary
Non-healthy diets are widely recognized as a determinant risk factor in the development of chronic, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes, type2 mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancer that greatly contribute to the global load of NCDs in different populations [1,2]. Eating behavior can be described by dietary patterns; this methodology has had an important boom since the past decade, because through this type of analysis, it has been possible to define the dietary characteristics of populations, describing consumed food groups, their included nutrients, their combination and variety, and the frequency and quantity of food consumption [5]. For this reason, the use of dietary patterns has taken relevance in the field of public health since these allow for more accurate recommendations about the population’s nourishment [6,7]. One of the leading consequences of these events has been a rise in food cost [8]
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