Let’s assume that people understand what they ought to eat to keep themselves healthy over the course of their lives and that the nutritious food to deliver good health is available in the market. More than one in three of the world’s people simply cannot afford a healthy diet. We know because the Food Prices for Nutrition team at Tufts University has developed tools that allow countries to use data that most of them are already collecting (to compile their Consumer Price Index) and from them calculate the cost of a healthy diet. The results have been alarming for some policy-makers, with encouraging results in at least one country.

Anna Herforth, who first told me about the cost of a healthy diet in 2021, was in Rome recently for a workshop on diet cost metrics with her colleagues Will Masters, who leads the Food Prices for Nutrition team, Olutayo Adeyemi, from Nigeria, and Imran Chiosa from Malawi. A chance too good to miss, despite the roar of the traffic beneath us.

Notes

1. The website of Food Prices for Nutrition offers more detailed explanations and links to other places where the data are being used. This one lets you see the numbers for each country; the surprise is that even in high-income countries, large numbers of people cannot afford a healthy diet.
2. The first episode on this topic was The cost is too damn high.
3. Want a transcript? We’ve got you covered, thanks to the show’s supporters.
4. Cover photo by DALL-E.

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