Tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets helps guide intervention for food security and improved nutrition

TL;DR

This paper discusses how tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets can inform policies and interventions to improve food security and nutrition worldwide.

Contribution

It highlights the use of least-cost diet models as diagnostic tools for monitoring food access and guiding interventions for better nutrition.

Findings

Least-cost diets help identify causes of poor diet quality.

Monitoring diet affordability guides targeted food security policies.

The approach supports universal access to healthy diets.

Abstract

This Policy Comment describes how the Food Policy article entitled 'Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries' (first published October 2020) and 'Retail consumer price data reveal gaps and opportunities to monitor food systems for nutrition' (first published September 2021) advanced the use of least-cost benchmark diets to monitor and improve food security. Those papers contributed to the worldwide use of least-cost diets as a new diagnostic indicator of food access, helping to distinguish among causes of poor diet quality related to high prices, low incomes, or displacement by other food options, thereby guiding intervention toward universal access to healthy diets.