The increasing cost of the basic foods required to promote health in Queensland.

Objective: To assess changes in the cost and availability of a standard basket of healthy food items (the Healthy Food Access Basket [HFAB]) in Queensland over time.

Design And Participants: A series of four cross-sectional surveys (in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2004) describing the cost and availability of foods in the HFAB over time. In the latest survey, 97 Queensland food stores across the five Australian Bureau of Statistics remoteness categories were compared.