Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? – Nutrition and Food Safety (2024)

A recent report from the USDA Economic Research Service challenges the assumption that healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables are too expensive.This offers evidence that most individuals should be able to meet food recommendations for about $5 per day!

The most interesting piece of this report, in my opinion, focuses on the cost of meeting food recommendations. This is based on an individual eating 2,000 calories per day and following the MyPlate eating recommendations. I simplified the results in the following graph (based on the prices of foods in the 50th percentile for each group):

You can see it is the least expensive to meet recommendations for the grain group. This is followed by the dairy group, then fruit. The most expensive groups to meet recommendations for are the protein group and the vegetable group. The rankings change slightly if we look at the food items in the extremes (very cheap or very expensive) of each group, but this look at the 50^th percentile is probably a good representation of the ‘average’ food for each food group.

Interestingly, the cost is less than $1.50 per day for each food group, with a total of just about $5 per day to meet recommendations for all the food groups.

Digging Deeper

By taking this one step further, we can also project what percentage of our food budget should be spent on each food group to meet the MyPlate recommendations. The following pie chart (on the left) illustrates this concept:

You can see that I also pasted the MyPlate recommendations on the right side – visually, they seem to match up pretty well! Fruits and vegetables, which should take up about half our plate, also came in at just under half of our food budget. Unfortunately, the reality is that less than 25% of our Americans’ food budgets are currently allocated toward fruits and vegetables—what percentage of your food budget is spent in the produce section?

How are we doing?

Only 13% of individuals in Wyoming are meeting the MyPlate recommendations for fruits and vegetables. Cost is a commonly cited barrier, but research like this challenges that reasoning. If we base our shopping decisions on MyPlate and dedicate just under half of our food budget to fruits and vegetables, it appears that food recommendations for most can be met at a reasonable cost.

Sources:

• usda.gov
• choosemyplate.gov

Contact Our Expert!

Email: [email protected]

Extension Educator:
Vicki Hayman – (307) 746-3531

Issued in furtherance of extension work, acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kelly Crane, Director, University of Wyoming Extension, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming Extension, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071.

The University of Wyoming is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.