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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...

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Autores principales: Love, Penelope, Whelan, Jillian, Bell, Colin, Grainger, Felicity, Russell, Cherie, Lewis, Meron, Lee, Amanda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
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.
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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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