Junk food not cheaper than healthy food

It doesn't cost any more to eat healthy food than it does to eat junk food, a government study found, casting doubt on the popular belief that many people can't afford healthful foods. The study, released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service, found that foods like beans, carrots, milk, and yogurt are actually less expensive than ice cream sandwiches, cinnamon buns, and soda, writes Emily P. Walker from medpagetoday. One reason that many people assume junk food is more affordable is because many studies that compare the cost of unhealthy foods with healthy ones use cost-per-calorie as a measurement. By this metric, vegetables and fruit are relatively more expensive ways to consume "food energy" (i.e., calories) because they don't contain many calories, whereas less healthy foods (also called "moderation foods"), which tend to be high in saturated fat and sugar, are a cheaper way to consume a lot of calories. For their study, the USDA researchers looked at calorie content but also compared the prices of more than 4,000 healthy foods and moderation foods based on price by weight and portion size. The researchers used dietary recommendations from the federal government's choosemyplate.gov website and identified healthy foods as those that contain at least one of the major food groups (vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, and protein) and contain only moderate amounts of saturated fats, added sugars, and sodium. The study found that by portion size, the cheapest food to eat is grains, followed by dairy, vegetables, fruit, protein, and moderation foods. The researchers noted that although much depends on the metric used, "it is not possible to conclude that healthy foods are more expensive than less healthy foods." "When making food choices, consumers may need to consider the entire cost of their diets," the study authors wrote. "Cheap food that provides few nutrients may actually be 'expensive' for the consumer from a nutritional economy perspective, whereas a food with a higher retail price that provides large amounts of nutrients may actually be quite cheap." When broken down by how much it costs per day to fulfill dietary guidelines, grains and dairy are the cheapest recommendations to meet while vegetable and protein are most expensive to meet, the investigators wrote. Fruit falls somewhere in the middle. The researchers pointed out that it would cost more money to meet the vegetable guidelines because nutrition guidelines call for consuming such a large amount of vegetables, not because they are significantly more expensive than other foods. "If consumers are trying to meet all of the fruit and vegetable recommendations on a significantly smaller share of their food budget than is recommended, it is understandable why they see fruits and vegetables as expensive," the researchers wrote. However, earlier studies have found that low-income people don't spend more on fruits and vegetables as their incomes rise, suggesting that "tastes and preferences play a large role in their choices." Which raises another point the researchers acknowledge in their study: Studies that examine the cost of meeting dietary recommendations don't take into account other factors that motivate food choice, such as the taste of food and cultural and personal food preferences. But the research could provide guidance to policymakers in determining whether a specific nutrition recommendation would be affordable for consumers, the study authors said.