Healthy foods 'more than twice as expensive' as unhealthy foods, report finds: 'We're in a bad place'

Healthier foods have grown more expensive at twice the rate of less healthy options leading to growing food inequality between the rich and poor, experts from The Food Foundation have warned. 

It comes as the charity launches the online Broken Plate exhibition to amplify the voices of people with lived experience of food insecurity, and to highlight the dangers of a healthy diet becoming more and more expensive. 

The exhibition runs alongside the charity’s annual Broken Plate report, which found that healthier foods are “more than twice as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods”, with healthier food increasing in price at twice the rate in the past two years. 

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It revealed that the most deprived fifth of the UK’s population would need to spend 45% of their disposable income on food to afford the government-recommended healthy diet, rising to 70% for households with children. In addition, children from the most deprived backgrounds consumed 20% fewer fruits and vegetables than the least deprived children.

This disparity in affordability of healthy foods is having a negative impact on children’s health outcomes, with children in the most deprived fifth of the population found to be nearly twice as likely to be living with obesity as those in the least deprived fifth by their first year of school. 

Similarly, almost a quarter (23%) of children in their last year of primary school in the most deprived areas were found to have experienced tooth decay in their adult teeth, compared to 10% of children in the least deprived areas. 

The exhibition, which was launched in parliament and is now viewable on The Food Foundation’s website, aims to highlight the voices of people with lived experience of food insecurity. It featured eight “food ambassadors”, who showcased photos illustrating issues such as fuel poverty, housing, parenthood, culture and disability and how they intersect with access to healthy food. 

One featured ambassador, Dominic Watters from Kent, photographed the small newsagents on his council estate to draw awareness of a lack of access to affordable healthy food for those living in “food deserts”.

“We live in the most deprived blocks of this council estate, where our access to nutrition is overlooked,” he wrote as part of his display. “The shop on the estate only sells the lowest quality of ultra-processed food, making this a food desert in the Garden of England.”

“This is where the bus never shows up,” he wrote next to a photo of a bus stop in his area. “It’s hard to make it out of here.”

Hannah Brinsden, head of policy and advocacy at The Food Foundation, told the Big Issue that the ambassadors “received training in photojournalism” as part of the exhibition, going on to take photos of their “food environment” and the issues they face. 

“A really important part of the work that we do is getting their voices heard in the messages that we put forward to policy makers,” Brinsden said. “They had the freedom to focus on whichever aspect they wanted to… which reflected all of the stats in the report and the complex nature of how food insecurity interlinks with the other challenges they’re facing.”

She explained that the exhibition was a real “talking point” when it was launched on 3 February, adding that it “brought to attention a lot of aspects relating to food insecurity that people might not have thought about.”

Brinsden explained that one of the “most stark” aspects of the research is the inequalities between the affordability of healthy and unhealthy foods. 

“The most deprived households have to spend a really significant amount of their disposable income just to afford a healthy diet,” she said, adding that living in food deserts can also impact the poorest. 

The report found that more than a quarter of places to buy food in England are fast-food outlets, rising to nearly one in three in the most deprived fifth of areas. 

“Some people just don’t have a supermarket near them, or they’re reliant on a corner shop, which is mostly confectionery snacks, and doesn’t have any fresh produce,” she said.

“The numbers tell a really powerful story, but the photos show what that actually looks like,” she said, adding that “the people who are making the decisions are not often the ones who are exposed to that in their day-to-day life.”

Brinsden explained that food inequality in the UK could be addressed through “making sure that benefits and wages are actually adequate to afford healthy diets”, supporting policies like free school meals, and improving the environments for people living in food deserts.

She added that healthier food has “always” been more expensive, but the affordability gap is “getting wider”.

“Yes, food inflation is not nearly as high as it was, but the prices have stayed high,” she said. “They’re not drastically dropping as a result, and that’s part of the problem, things are not necessarily massively worsening, but we’re stuck in a really bad place.”

She added: “The government have announced they’re putting together this food strategy, but we really wanted to emphasise that citizens’ voices need to be a crucial part of that, and the realities of the situation on the ground can only really be understood by people that have been through it.

“Having conversations with those people really has to be a part of the process.”

Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation, explained that the UK’s current food system is “failing to provide large swathes of the population with the basic nutrition needed for them to stay healthy and thrive”, adding that there is a “tragic imbalance” between the food that is “marketed, available and affordable, and foods that are healthy and sustainable”. 

“Often it is the most vulnerable children in our society who suffer the worst consequences of this,” said Taylor. “Not only can lack of nutrition lead to serious health conditions, it can also lead to children being unable to concentrate in school and have a lasting negative impact on mental health, entrenching inequalities from a young age.”

She continued: “The government has recently announced that it has started working on a National Food Strategy. We hope that this will be seized as an opportunity to tackle these inequalities through cross departmental working, with acknowledgement that key changes to the food system can help to achieve Labour’s missions, from economic growth, to breaking down barriers to opportunity to relieving pressure on the NHS.” 

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