Abstract
BackgroundPrice and affordability of foods are important determinants of health. Targeted food pricing policies may help improve population diets. However, methods producing comparable data to inform relevant policy decisions are lacking in Australia and globally. The objective was to develop and pilot standardised methods to assess the price, relative price and affordability of healthy (recommended) and current (unhealthy) diets and test impacts of a potential policy change.MethodsMethods followed the optimal approach proposed by INFORMAS using recent Australian dietary intake data and guidelines. Draft healthy and current (unhealthy) diet baskets were developed for five household structures. Food prices were collected in stores in a high and low SES location in Brisbane, Australia. Diet prices were calculated and compared with household incomes, and with potential changes to the Australian Taxation System. Wilcoxen-signed rank tests were used to compare differences in price.ResultsThe draft tools and protocols were deemed acceptable at household level, but methods could be refined. All households spend more on current (unhealthy) diets than required to purchase healthy (recommended) diets, with the majority (53–64 %) of the food budget being spent on ‘discretionary’ choices, including take-away foods and alcohol. A healthy diet presently costs between 20–31 % of disposable income of low income households, but would become unaffordable for these families under proposed changes to expand the GST to apply to all foods in Australia.ConclusionsResults confirmed that diet pricing methods providing meaningful, comparable data to inform potential fiscal and health policy actions can be developed, but draft tools should be refined. Results suggest that healthy diets can be more affordable than current (unhealthy) diets in Australia, but other factors may be as important as price in determining food choices.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-2996-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Price and affordability of foods are important determinants of health
There is an urgent need for nutrition policy actions that can help shift the current intake of the whole population to a healthier diet consistent with dietary recommendations in Australia [4]
Construction of the draft diet basket pricing tools Diet baskets were developed for five different household types and structures, in expansion of the one reference household proposed by the INFORMAS approach, to encompass the major options used previously in food price surveys in Australian states and territories and optimize utility: [6, 9, 12, 14, 16]
Summary
Targeted food pricing policies may help improve population diets. The objective was to develop and pilot standardised methods to assess the price, relative price and affordability of healthy (recommended) and current (unhealthy) diets and test impacts of a potential policy change. There is an urgent need for nutrition policy actions that can help shift the current intake of the whole population to a healthier diet consistent with dietary recommendations in Australia [4]. Assessing diet price and affordability The public perception that healthy foods are expensive is believed to be a key factor contributing to poor dietary choices and diet-related health inequities [4,5,6]. If populations were to follow dietary recommendations, this may lead to higher food costs, with those households with the lowest incomes being most vulnerable, as they spend less per person on food, but a greater proportion of their total expenditure on food [7]
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