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Is Healthy Diet Affordable for Everyone? Regular physical activities and a healthy diet are very important to help people who want to maintain a healthy body, especially for heart disease prevention. The update in 2010 of the so-called Food Pyramid had urged Americans to eat more foods containing potassium, dietary fiber, Vitamin-D and calcium. Food Pyramid is the Dietary Guidelines for Americans that was established by Congress. It became law in 1977 and made its debut in 1980. The Guidelines, which are overseen by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), get revision every 5 years. The latest revision (2010) was made public on January 31, 2011. But according to researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, a healthy diet is expensive and many of the Americans would have difficulty in meeting the new guidelines. This is because a healthy diet would add hundreds more dollars to their annual grocery bill. The study, which was published on August 4, 2011 in the journal ‘Health Affairs’, argued that if more potassium is to be introduced in a diet, it is likely the average consumer’s food cost will be inflated by an additional $380 per year.
About 2,000 adults in King County, Washington were surveyed by telephone and about 1,300 of these participants returned printed questionnaire noting what food they ate. The data collected was analyzed for nutrient content and estimated cost. Results of analysis showed that people who spent the most on food tend to comply more closely with the Federal guidelines for potassium, dietary fiber, Vitamin-D and calcium. People who spent the least tend to get the lowest intakes of the 4 recommended nutrients and the highest intake of saturated fat and added sugar, which should instead be minimized to prevent heart disease and stroke. Meanwhile, the researchers also criticized some of the marketing for a healthy diet featuring salmon might be beyond affordability for most average Americans. They also urged government to provide assistance for meeting the nutritional guidelines in an affordable way. Currently, there are food-assistance programs available to help people make healthier choices by providing coupons to buy fruits and vegetables. However, some of the programs also refrain the poor from using them. For example, a Washington state policy makes it difficult for women with children to buy potatoes with food assistance coupons. On the other hand, some health experts do not agree that healthy diet is not affordable. One scientist insisted that it is inexpensive to get all the nutrients a body needs to meet the Federal guidelines. It is the choices people want to get those nutrients that are not cheap. For instance, if people want to eat only organic food and vegetables out of season, the cost is definitely higher. Instead, people can acquire potassium and dietary fiber from potatoes and beans, which are not expensive. Besides choices, there are other factors that could affect food prices. The subsidies offered by government to farmers who grow certain crops could affect food prices. How far a person needs to travel to get to a grocery store that sells a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables can also raise the cost of buying healthy food. Almost 15 percent of households in America do not have enough money to eat the way they want. Recent estimates also show that 49 million Americans make food decisions based on cost. The assumption that the poor eat cheap food because it tastes good is not true since they would make better choices if they could afford to. At the moment, there are many Americans just could not adhere to these food guidelines. No wonder some people have qualified healthy eating as a privilege for the rich folks! It is true at least for the time being until more measures can be done to alleviate the burden of the poor in terms of food cost.
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