Cost of Healthy Diets #

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations #

Figure A4.1 [see below] shows different ranges of cost for a healthy diet, corresponding to different definitions of a healthy diet. These ranges are obtained by costing recommended food quantities published across ten FBDGs (blue bars), as well as across four EAT-Lancet reference diets (green bars) (flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan). Each bar corresponds to the average cost in 2017 obtained when a particular diet pattern is applied to the 170 countries in the data set. The cost is seen to vary depending on the definition applied. Across the ten different definitions of a healthy diet published in the FBDGs, the cost of a healthy diet ranges from USD 3.27–4.57 per day, giving a point estimate based on median costs of USD 3.75 (blue horizontal line in Figure A4.1). This compares to a range of between USD 3.31 and USD 3.61 for the least-cost versions of the EAT-Lancet reference diet variants, giving a point estimate based on median cost of USD 3.44.

Source: https://www.fao.org/3/ca9692en/online/ca9692en.html#chapter-4a_1