The growing price gap between more and less healthy foods: analysis of a novel longitudinal UK dataset

The UK government has noted the public health importance of food prices and the affordability of a healthy diet. Yet, methods for tracking change over time have not been established. We aimed to investigate the prices of more and less healthy foods over time using existing government data on nationa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-10, Vol.9 (10), p.e109343-e109343
Main Authors: Jones, Nicholas R V, Conklin, Annalijn I, Suhrcke, Marc, Monsivais, Pablo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beverages
Biology and Life Sciences
Chronic illnesses
Clinical medicine
Collaboration
Commerce
Common Agricultural Policy
Consumer Price Index
Consumers
Consumption
Datasets
Diet
Epidemiology
Food
Food - economics
Food groups
Food security
Food Supply - economics
Food, Organic - economics
Fruits
Health care
Health policy
Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Nutrients
Nutrition
Nutrition research
Population (statistical)
Public health
Systematic review
Trends
United Kingdom
Variance analysis
Vegetables
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The UK government has noted the public health importance of food prices and the affordability of a healthy diet. Yet, methods for tracking change over time have not been established. We aimed to investigate the prices of more and less healthy foods over time using existing government data on national food prices and nutrition content. We linked economic data for 94 foods and beverages in the UK Consumer Price Index to food and nutrient data from the UK Department of Health's National Diet and Nutrition Survey, producing a novel dataset across the period 2002-2012. Each item was assigned to a food group and also categorised as either "more healthy" or "less healthy" using a nutrient profiling model developed by the Food Standards Agency. We tested statistical significance using a t-test and repeated measures ANOVA. The mean (standard deviation) 2012 price/1000 kcal was £2.50 (0.29) for less healthy items and £7.49 (1.27) for more healthy items. The ANOVA results confirmed that all prices had risen over the period 2002-2012, but more healthy items rose faster than less healthy ones in absolute terms:£0.17 compared to £0.07/1000 kcal per year on average for more and less healthy items, respectively (p
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0109343