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: Objectives: To assess the cost, cost differential and affordability of current and recommended (healthy, equitable, culturally acceptable and more sustainable) diets in the Torres Strait Islands and compare with other Queensland locations. Methods: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healthy Diets ASAP (Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing) methods protocol was applied in five randomly selected communities in the Torres Strait Islands. Results: The current diet was 32% more expensive than that recommended; ‘discretionary’ foods comprised 64% of the current diet cost. Families could save at least A$281.38 a fortnight by switching to recommended diets. However, these cost 35‐40% more than elsewhere in Queensland. Recommended diets would cost 35% of median and 48% of welfare household income in the Torres Straits. Conclusions: While less expensive than the current diet, recommended diets are unaffordable for most households. Consequently, many Torres Strait Islander families are at high risk of food insecurity and diet‐related disease. Implications for public health: Urgent policy action is required to further lower the relative price of recommended diets, and also increase household incomes and welfare supplements to equitably improve food security and diet‐related health, and contribute to environmental sustainability in the Torres Strait Islands., In 2008, the Australian Government committed to working with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of Australia to achieve equality in health status and life expectancy between Indigenous and [...]

It is crucial to ensure healthy diets are affordable in low socioeconomic groups, such as welfare-dependent households, who experience higher rates of diet-related disease than others. This study assessed the cost of habitual (unhealthy) and recommended (healthy) diets in six welfare-dependent and six other, comparable Australian households, using either popular branded products or the cheapest available alternatives. It also assessed diet affordability in welfare-dependent households, before and after modest increases in government welfare payments introduced in early September 2023. Results confirmed that recommended diets were less expensive than habitual diets in all households unless the cheapest available products were included. This strategy reduced habitual diet costs by 35–37% and recommended diet costs by 30–32%. The lower cost differential could aid perceptions that healthy foods are more expensive than unhealthy foods. In April 2023, 23–37% of the income of welfare-dependent households with children was required to purchase recommended diets; this reduced only to 20–35% in September 2023. Hence, the increases in welfare payments were insufficient to meaningfully improve the affordability of healthy diets in the most vulnerable Australians. In the current cost-of-living crisis, there is an urgent need for more welfare support to help purchase healthy diets. Monitoring of diet cost and affordability is also required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the cost and affordability of two fortnightly diets (representing the national guidelines and current consumption) across areas containing Australia's major supermarkets.Design: The Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing protocol was used.Setting: Price data were collected online and via phone calls in fifty-one urban and inner regional locations across Australia.Participants: Not applicable.Results: Healthy diets were consistently less expensive than current (unhealthy) diets. Nonetheless, healthy diets would cost 25-26 % of the disposable income for low-income households and 30-31 % of the poverty line. Differences in gross incomes (the most available income metric which overrepresents disposable income) drove national variations in diet affordability (from 14 % of the median gross household incomes in the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory to 25 % of the median gross household income in Tasmania).Conclusions: In Australian cities and regional areas with major supermarkets, access to affordable diets remains problematic for families receiving low incomes. These findings are likely to be exacerbated in outer regional and remote areas (not included in this study). To make healthy diets economically appealing, policies that reduce the (absolute and relative) costs of healthy diets and increase the incomes of Australians living in poverty are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Low socio-economic groups (SEG) in Australia suffer poorer diet-related health than the rest of the population. Therefore, it is expected that low SEG are less likely to consume diets conforming to Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADG) than higher SEG. However, dietary intake of low SEG in Australia has not been synthesised methodically. This systematic scoping review aims to explore detailed dietary intake of low SEG in Australia in comparison to higher SEG. Design: A systematic search of peer-reviewed literature and websites, since 1999. Data were extracted, synthesised and analysed in relation to study populations, dietary assessment methods, food groups studied, socio-economic measures and dietary intake. Setting: Australia. Participants: Persons of any age and gender, differentiated by a socio-economic measure. Results: Results from thirty-three included studies confirmed that overall dietary nutritional value/quality tended to be lower in low SEG than higher SEG in Australia. However, findings were inconsistent across studies for all food groups or all socio-economic measures. Large variations were found between study metrics, definitions, dietary assessment methods, granularity of results and conclusions. Quantitative intakes of all ADG food groups by SEG were not reported in most studies and, where reported, were not comparable. Conclusion: The review showed detailed dietary data are lacking to inform policy and practice and help develop targeted interventions to improve diet-related health of Australian low SEG. There is urgent need for regular, granular assessment of population dietary data to enable comparison of intake between SEG in the context of national food-based dietary guidelines in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To determine the reliability of streamlined data-gathering techniques for examining the price and affordability of a healthy (recommended) and unhealthy (current) diet. We additionally estimated the price and affordability of diets across socio-economic areas and quantified the influence of different pricing scenarios.Design: Following the Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing (ASAP) protocol, we compared a cross-sectional sample of food and beverage pricing data collected using online data and phone calls (lower-resource streamlined techniques) with data collected in-store from the same retailers.Setting: Food and beverage prices were collected from major supermarkets, fast food and alcohol retailers in eight conveniently sampled areas in Victoria, Australia (n 72 stores), stratified by area-level deprivation and remoteness.Participants: This study did not involve human participants.Results: The biweekly price of a healthy diet was on average 21 % cheaper ($596) than an unhealthy diet ($721) for a four-person family using the streamlined techniques, which was comparable with estimates using in-store data (healthy: $594, unhealthy: $731). The diet price differential did not vary considerably across geographical areas (range: 18-23 %). Both diets were estimated to be unaffordable for families living on indicative low disposable household incomes and below the poverty line. The inclusion of generic brands notably reduced the prices of healthy and unhealthy diets (≥20 %), rendering both affordable against indicative low disposable household incomes. Inclusion of discounted prices marginally reduced diet prices (3 %).Conclusions: Streamlined data-gathering techniques are a reliable method for regular, flexible and widespread monitoring of the price and affordability of population diets in areas where supermarkets have an online presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: The price and affordability of food are priorities for public health and health equity; however, Australia lacks a consistent method to evaluate healthy versus unhealthy diets, creating a gap in routine food price reporting., Objective: This review aimed to identify and summarize recent methods used to assess and monitor the price and/or affordability of food and beverages in Australia using a health lens., Data Sources: Four academic databases (MEDLINE Complete, Global Health, CINAHL Complete, and Business Source Complete) were searched in English from 2016 to 2022. Relevant gray literature was searched through Google Scholar and government websites., Data Extraction: Five reviewers screened titles and abstracts, and full-text screening was conducted by 1 reviewer, with eligibility confirmed by a second reviewer. The quality of studies was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute "Checklist for Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies.", Data Analysis: Twenty-five eligible studies were identified. Eleven studies used a version of the Healthy Diets Australian Standardized Affordability and Pricing protocol to collect prices for a "healthy" diet modelled on dietary guidelines and an "unhealthy" diet based on a habitual Australian diet. These studies consistently found unhealthy diets to be more expensive than healthy diets. Other identified methods included assessing the price of household diets across healthy baskets (n = 6), store types (n = 5), a planetary health diet (n = 1), packaged foods according to their Health Star Rating (n = 1), a fruit and vegetable basket (n = 1), school canteen foods against a traffic light system (n = 1), and weekly healthy meal plans (n = 1). Healthy diets tended to be less costly than less healthy diets, but both diets were often unaffordable in regional areas, for people on low incomes, and for First Nations peoples., Conclusion: Consistent country-wide application of methods for monitoring the price and affordability of foods and diets in Australia is needed-including tailored approaches for priority groups., Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO registration no. CRD42022333531., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Life Sciences Institute. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)