Millions of families cutting back on healthy food that is twice as expensive as unhealthy options

New data from The Food Foundation’s Food Insecurity Tracker shows the gap in consumption of healthy foods is widening between ‘food secure’ and ‘food insecure’ families.

• Deprived four and five-year-olds twice as likely to be obese

According to the findings, 15 per cent of households in the UK are experiencing ‘food insecurity’ – an estimated eight million adults and three million children.

Of households that reported experiencing food insecurity in the past month, 60 per cent also reported cutting back on purchasing fruit compared to 11 per cent of food secure households.

A similar pattern is seen across vegetables (44 per cent of food insecure households cutting back compared with 6 per cent of food secure) and fish (59 per cent vs 15 per cent). 

The Food Foundation warned that with such high rates of ‘food insecurity’ persisting, the potential detrimental impact on health could affect a substantial proportion of the population and considerably widen inequalities.

It says that the findings highlight that supporting those on the lowest incomes to afford a nutritious diet should be a central commitment being made in manifestos by political parties ahead of the next election.

According to The Food Foundation a key reason for the difference in healthy food consumption between the most and least deprived is due to healthy food being, on average, over twice as expensive per calorie as less healthy options.

In some cases, it says that unhealthy food is the only affordable option for many families.

It finds that on average, the poorest fifth of the population need to spend half of their disposable income on food to afford the Government recommended healthy diet, putting a healthy diet out of reach for millions.

Weekly food price changes

The Food Foundation’s Basic Basket Tracker, which measures weekly price changes in what the ‘average’ man and woman could typically eat as part of a reasonably costed, adequately nutritious diet, Since April 2022 when measurement began, the cost of has increased by 24-26 per cent (from £43.52 to £54.64 for the man’s basket and from £40.96 to £50.77 for the woman’s basket).

To ensure that families can reliably afford and access healthy food to prevent food insecurity and diet-related disease, The Food Foundation is calling on all politically parties to commit to:  

• A requirement that the cost of healthy and sustainable diets be taken into account when setting benefits levels and the national living wage to ensure that all families have sufficient income to feed their children a healthy and nutritious diet.  
• Expand the free school meals scheme to ensure all children can access a hot, nutritious meal in the middle of the school day.
• Expand eligibility, improve uptake and increase the value of the Healthy Start Scheme to improve access to nutritious food for pre-school aged children.