Food Prices
What is the relative price and affordability of ‘less healthy’ vs ‘healthy’ foods, meals and diets?
Food prices and food affordability are important determinants of food choices, obesity and non-communicable diseases. The monitoring of the price and affordability of ‘healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ foods and diets globally will provide robust data and benchmarks to inform economic and fiscal policy responses.
A step-wise monitoring framework, including measurement indicators, has been proposed for INFORMAS:
- ‘Minimal’ data collection will assess the differential price of ‘healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ foods
- ‘Expanded’ monitoring will assess the differential price of ‘healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ diets
- And the ‘optimal’ approach will also monitor food affordability, by taking into account household income
For the Module Overview video describing protocols, methodological developments, and common FAQs, please follow the link here
Dr. Sally Mackay (Coordinator)
Research Fellow and Lecturer
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Email: Sally Mackay
Amanda Lee
Professor of Public Health Policy, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Australia
Kathryn Backholer
Meron Lewis
Christina Zorbas
Christina Pollard
Tim Landrigan
Mary L’Abbe
Guanlan Hu
Amos Laar
Delaram Ghodsi
Carolina Batis Ruvalcaba
Mishel Unar Munguia
Luciana Castronuovo
Stefanie Vandevijvere
Igor Pravst
Lewis, M.; Nash, S.; Lee, A.J. Cost and Affordability of Habitual and Recommended Diets in Welfare-Dependent Households in Australia. Nutrients 2024, 16, 659. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16050659
Lee, A.J., Herron, LM., Rainow, S., Wells, L., Kenny, I., Kenny, L., Wells, I., Kavanagh, M., Bryce, S., Balmer, L. Improving economic access to healthy diets in first nations communities in high-income, colonised countries: a systematic scoping review. Nutr J 23, 10 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-023-00895-0
Lewis, M.; Nash, S.; Lee, A.J. Cost and Affordability of Habitual and Recommended Diets in Welfare-Dependent Households in Australia. Nutrients 2024, 16, 659. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16050659
Monitoring the price and affordability of foods and diets globally (pages 82–95) A. Lee, C. N. Mhurchu, G. Sacks, B. Swinburn, W. Snowdon, S. Vandevijvere, C. Hawkes, M. L’Abbé, M. Rayner, D. Sanders, S. Barquera, S. Friel, B. Kelly, S. Kumanyika, T. Lobstein, J. Ma, J. Macmullan, S. Mohan, C. Monteiro, B. Neal, C. Walker and INFORMAS
Read the INFORMAS paper online here
Below are the INFORMAS protocols to download. Some protocols are still under development – contact us if you would like more information. Please read the terms and conditions regarding the use of the protocols. You must complete this agreement and return it to us if you are using and/or adapting the protocol. You may then use, modify and reproduce the protocol, but the work that results from using the INFORMAS resources remains available to the INFORMAS group and falls under the same ‘copyleft’ principles as the original protocol (i.e., you can’t claim copyright on protocols you develop based on INFORMAS resources). You don’t have to share the whole work that results from using the INFORMAS resources, but are expected to share:
- Any modifications or updates you make to the protocol (e.g., updates for your own country)
- The final (cleaned) data as collected using the protocol.