More and more people are becoming aware of their health and switching to a healthy diet. Now they are avoiding the fried, fatty, and oily food options that are a big reason for many diseases. And turning toward healthy foods. But the question arrives, is eating healthy every day expensive? How much does it cost to eat healthy per day?
Actually, it is not that expensive for Americans to switch to healthy foods. As per the study of Harvard School of Public Health, it just costs $1.50 more for a healthy diet as compared to an unhealthy diet. So it means you have to pay $500 per person per year to switch to healthy foods rather than unhealthy foods.
Let’s learn more about the cost of eating healthy food daily.
How Much Does It Cost to Eat Healthy Per Day?
According to new data from the Harvard School of Public Health, the best meals cost around $1.50 more per day than the unhealthy diets (HSPH). It means a good diet costs an average family of four $2,000 more per year, or $500 per person, than an unhealthy one. In addition, USDA estimates that you can add an additional 10 to 30 percent if you are purchasing organic.
This price difference is negligible compared to the economic consequences of diet-related chronic diseases, which would be drastically lowered by adopting good eating habits.
They discovered that diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts are much more expensive than diets high in processed foods, red meats, and refined grains. The price differential was greatest for protein groups: More nutritious protein options cost between $0.29 and $0.47 more per 200-calorie serving than less nutritious alternatives.
How Much Does It Cost to Eat Healthy Per Day, Globally?
In 2020, the global average daily cost of a nutritious diet, as measured in terms of current purchasing power parities, was $3.54. In low-income countries, the average price was $3.20, whereas it was $3.35 in high-income countries.
Looking at upper-middle-income countries, a nutritious diet costs an average of $3.76; in lower-middle-income countries, the average cost was slightly less at $3.70.
Why Do Unhealthy Foods Cost Less Than Healthy Ones?
The study’s authors discovered that healthier eating habits, such as those abundant in fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts, tend to be more expensive in the long run. It’s estimated that the most healthful diets cost roughly $1.50 more per day than the least healthful ones.
It was hypothesized by the study’s authors that the low price of unhealthy diets could be traced back to the government’s emphasis on the mass production of cheap commodities, which has resulted in an intricate system of farming, warehousing, transportation, processing, production, & marketing capabilities that prioritizes the sale of highly processed food products for the industry’s benefit.
What Foods To Eat & What Not To?
There is widespread agreement on which foods are particularly excellent or bad. We should prioritize minimizing unhealthy foods such as processed meats, excessively refined starches, sugars, carbs, trans fat, and sodium.
We should put more emphasis on foods that we know are healthy, such as fruits and vegetables, nuts, vegetable oils, and seafood. Many other items, such as chicken or eggs, fall somewhere in the middle and are, therefore, health-neutral.
What Policies Are Being Framed To Incline Towards Healthy Foods?
To enhance the nutritional intake of Americans and lower the risk of chronic diseases, new strategies centered on modifying food prices are being investigated. There have been proposals to tax particular snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages, for instance.
The premise is that by increasing the price of less nutritious foods, consumers will buy fewer of them and instead choose better alternatives.
Government programs that reduce the price of healthful foods, such as fruits and vegetables, are another alternative. One study indicated that when the price of fruits and vegetables decreased by 50 percent, consumers ate 25 percent more of them.
Bottom Line
This was all about how much does it cost to eat healthy per day. So the simple answer is it costs $1.50 more to eat healthy food per day than healthy food. This means you have to spend $500 more per year to eat healthily.
If seen rightly, this number is far lower than the amount of money that has to be spent on diseases from eating unhealthy foods.
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