"Affordability of healthy and sustainable diets: Cost of nutrient adequacy and EAT-Lancet diets vs. household income around the world"
Abstract
The EAT-Lancet Commission drew on all available nutritional and environmental evidence to construct the first global benchmark diet capable of sustaining health and protecting the planet but did not assess dietary affordability. We used food price and household income data to estimate the affordability of EAT-Lancet benchmark diets, as a first step to guiding interventions to improve diets around the world. With retail prices for 744 foods, used by the World Bank to measure the average cost of living in 159 countries, we compared the total diet cost per day to each country’s mean per capita household income, computed the fraction of people for whom the most affordable EAT-Lancet diet exceeds total income, and measured affordability relative to a least-cost diet meeting essential nutrient requirements. Current diets differ greatly from EAT-Lancet targets. Improving diets is affordable in many countries, but for many consumers, they would require some combination of higher income, nutrition assistance, and lower prices. Data and analysis on the cost of healthier foods is needed to inform both local interventions and systemic changes.
Bio
Will Masters is a Professor in the Friedman School, with a secondary appointment in Tufts University's Department of Economics. His research uses economic methods to inform and improve the food system, especially in developing countries. From 2011 to 2014 he served as chair of the Friedman School’s Department of Food and Nutrition Policy, and before coming to Tufts was a faculty member in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University (1991-2010), and also at the University of Zimbabwe (1989-90), Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2000) and Columbia University (2003-04).
He is the co-author of an undergraduate textbook, Economics of Agricultural Development: World Food Systems and Resource Use (Routledge, 3rd ed. 2014). From 2006 through 2011 he edited Agricultural Economics, the journal of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. In 2010 he was named an International Fellow of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, and he has been awarded both the Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis (2013) and the Publication of Enduring Quality Award (2014) from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA).