The cost of a healthy and sustainable diet--who can afford it?

Objective: Climate change is affecting the ability of food systems to provide sufficient nutritious and affordable foods at all times. Healthy and sustainable (H&S) food choices are important contributions to health and climate change policy efforts. This paper presents empirical data on the affordability of a food basket that incorporates principles of health and sustainability across different food sub-systems, socioeconomic neighbourhoods and household income levels in Greater Western Sydney, Australia.

Towards healthy and sustainable food consumption: an Australian case study.

Objective: To articulate a healthy and sustainable (H&S) diet; outline key health and environmental sustainability principles that can be applied in the selection of foods for inclusion in such a diet; and describe a methodology with which to assess the availability and affordability of a H&S food basket.

Design: We synthesized publically available evidence on the environmental impact of different foods from academic, government, industry and non-government sources and constructed a hypothetical H&S equivalent of the typical Australian diet. Based on this, we constructed a weekly H&S food basket for a household of two adults and two children.