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Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable
Rural communities experience higher rates of obesity and reduced food security compared with urban communities. The perception that healthy foods are expensive contributes to poor dietary choices. Providing an accessible, available, affordable healthy food supply is an equitable way to improve the n...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266685/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400654 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15112469 |
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author | Love, Penelope Whelan, Jillian Bell, Colin Grainger, Felicity Russell, Cherie Lewis, Meron Lee, Amanda |
author_facet | Love, Penelope Whelan, Jillian Bell, Colin Grainger, Felicity Russell, Cherie Lewis, Meron Lee, Amanda |
author_sort | Love, Penelope |
collection | PubMed |
description | Rural communities experience higher rates of obesity and reduced food security compared with urban communities. The perception that healthy foods are expensive contributes to poor dietary choices. Providing an accessible, available, affordable healthy food supply is an equitable way to improve the nutritional quality of the diet for a community, however, local food supply data are rarely available for small rural towns. This study used the Healthy Diets ASAP tool to assess price, price differential and affordability of recommended (healthy) and current diets in a rural Local Government Area (LGA) (pop ≈ 7000; 10 towns) in Victoria, Australia. All retail food outlets were surveyed (n = 40). The four most populous towns had supermarkets; remaining towns had one general store each. Seven towns had café/take-away outlets, and all towns had at least one hotel/pub. For all towns the current unhealthy diet was more expensive than the recommended healthy diet, with 59.5% of the current food budget spent on discretionary items. Affordability of the healthy diet accounted for 30–32% of disposable income. This study confirms that while a healthy diet is less expensive than the current unhealthier diet, affordability is a challenge for rural communities. Food security is reduced further with restricted geographical access, a limited healthy food supply, and higher food prices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6266685 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62666852018-12-15 Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable Love, Penelope Whelan, Jillian Bell, Colin Grainger, Felicity Russell, Cherie Lewis, Meron Lee, Amanda Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Rural communities experience higher rates of obesity and reduced food security compared with urban communities. The perception that healthy foods are expensive contributes to poor dietary choices. Providing an accessible, available, affordable healthy food supply is an equitable way to improve the nutritional quality of the diet for a community, however, local food supply data are rarely available for small rural towns. This study used the Healthy Diets ASAP tool to assess price, price differential and affordability of recommended (healthy) and current diets in a rural Local Government Area (LGA) (pop ≈ 7000; 10 towns) in Victoria, Australia. All retail food outlets were surveyed (n = 40). The four most populous towns had supermarkets; remaining towns had one general store each. Seven towns had café/take-away outlets, and all towns had at least one hotel/pub. For all towns the current unhealthy diet was more expensive than the recommended healthy diet, with 59.5% of the current food budget spent on discretionary items. Affordability of the healthy diet accounted for 30–32% of disposable income. This study confirms that while a healthy diet is less expensive than the current unhealthier diet, affordability is a challenge for rural communities. Food security is reduced further with restricted geographical access, a limited healthy food supply, and higher food prices. MDPI 2018-11-05 2018-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6266685/ /pubmed/30400654 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15112469 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Love, Penelope Whelan, Jillian Bell, Colin Grainger, Felicity Russell, Cherie Lewis, Meron Lee, Amanda Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title | Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title_full | Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title_fullStr | Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title_full_unstemmed | Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title_short | Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria—Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable |
title_sort | healthy diets in rural victoria—cheaper than unhealthy alternatives, yet unaffordable |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266685/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30400654 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15112469 |
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