Food campaigners have urged the government to push ahead with its cross-government National Food Strategy after a new report found dietary inequalities had worsened over the past two years.
The Food Foundation’s Broken Plate report reveals healthier foods grew more expensive at twice the rate of less healthy options over the period.
The report also found that families with children were being hit the hardest by the lack of affordable food.
Today’s report flags up analysis of the Office for National Statistics’ Consumer Price Index conducted by the University of Cambridge, which shows a stark disparity in the cost of healthy and less healthy foods, as defined by the government’s nutrient profiling model.
In 2024, more healthy foods cost more than twice as much as less healthy options, averaging £8.80 per 1,000 kcal compared with £4.30 for less healthy foods, it found. The gap widened in the past two years, with the cost of more healthy foods rising by 21% from 2022 to 2024, while less healthy foods saw an increase of only 11%.
Meanwhile, research in the report found the most deprived fifth of the population would need to spend 45% of their disposable income on food to afford the government-recommended healthy diet, rising to 70% for households with children.
While the overall figure has decreased from the peak of the cost of living crisis (50% in 2021-22) the Food Foundation said it remained higher than the previous year’s figure (43% in 2020-21).
The foundation said it hoped the report would put pressure on health secretary Wes Streeting to respond to a previous report from the House of Lords Committee on Food, Diet & Obesity, which called for a raft of measures to tackle food insecurity and obesity, especially among poorer families.
Environment secretary Steve Reed is due to begin meetings with industry groups and health experts on the government’s new National Food Strategy in the next few weeks, though little has emerged as yet of details of how it will operate.
“The Broken Plate report sadly shows that our food system is failing to provide large swathes of the population with the basic nutrition needed for them to stay healthy and thrive,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation.
“There is a tragic imbalance in the UK between the food that is marketed, available and affordable, and foods that are healthy and sustainable.”
Former government food tsar Henry Dimbleby, whose 2021 National Food Strategy is expected to be built upon by the new strategy, said: “This report couldn’t come at a more critical moment. As the government rolls out its new food strategy, addressing the incentives that drive the sale and aggressive marketing of unhealthy foods must be a top priority. The human and economic toll is too great to ignore any longer.”
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