Aim: To estimate the difference in cost and nutrient value for selected regular and healthier supermarket food items in New Zealand.
Method: Electronic sales data from supermarket shoppers (n=882) from February 2004 to January 2005 were used to determine the 1000 top-selling food items. These items were categorised according to food type. Five regular items and five healthier options were selected per category to create two shopping baskets for which cost and nutrient data were then compared.
Results: The total weekly household cost did not differ substantially overall: NZ90.21 dollars for the regular basket vs NZ96.63 dollars for the healthy basket. However, healthier options were more expensive for some specific food categories: meat and poultry (27%); butter and margarine (44%); and cheese (19%). Healthier options were less expensive for canned fish (10%). Per unit weight, the healthier basket contained considerably less energy (29%), total fat (35%), saturated fat (52%), sugar (56%), and sodium (20%) than the regular basket.
Conclusions: Cost is frequently perceived to be a barrier to a healthy diet, yet our analyses demonstrate that substantial improvements in nutrition are possible without incurring an increase in price for many staple food categories. However, healthier options within some important food categories, notably meat and spreads, are more expensive. Consideration should be given to ways in which this cost differential can be addressed to favour key healthy diet choices.