Making it on the breadline - improving food security on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, Central Australia.

Background: This longitudinal case study describes the efforts and impacts of community-controlled service organisations on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in Central Australia to tackle food security since the 1980s, with a focus on the last decade, particularly during a year of concerted action from mid-2018.

Methods: The co-designed study comprised an interrupted time series with controls. Availability, affordability, accessibility and sales of foods in the community retail stores on the APY Lands were monitored regularly from 2014 to mid-2022, including by local research teams.

The Price of Foods, Beverages, and Diets in Australia: An Updated Systematic Review.

Context: The price and affordability of food are priorities for public health and health equity; however, Australia lacks a consistent method to evaluate healthy versus unhealthy diets, creating a gap in routine food price reporting.

Objective: This review aimed to identify and summarize recent methods used to assess and monitor the price and/or affordability of food and beverages in Australia using a health lens.

Data Sources: Four academic databases (MEDLINE Complete, Global Health, CINAHL Complete, and Business Source Complete) were searched in English from 2016 to 2022.

Benchmarking for healthy food stores: protocol for a randomised controlled trial with remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia to enhance adoption of health-enabling store policy and practice.

Background: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in remote Australia have initiated bold policies for health-enabling stores. Benchmarking, a data-driven and facilitated 'audit and feedback' with action planning process, provides a potential strategy to strengthen and scale health-enabling best-practice adoption by remote community store directors/owners. We aim to co-design a benchmarking model with five partner organisations and test its effectiveness with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community stores in remote Australia.

Cost and Affordability of Habitual and Recommended Diets in Welfare-Dependent Households in Australia.

It is crucial to ensure healthy diets are affordable in low socioeconomic groups, such as welfare-dependent households, who experience higher rates of diet-related disease than others. This study assessed the cost of habitual (unhealthy) and recommended (healthy) diets in six welfare-dependent and six other, comparable Australian households, using either popular branded products or the cheapest available alternatives. It also assessed diet affordability in welfare-dependent households, before and after modest increases in government welfare payments introduced in early September 2023.

CO-Creation and Evaluation of Food Environments to Advance Community Health (COACH).

Introduction: Food environments are a key determinant of food intake and diet-related health. This paper describes the development of an iterative, adaptive, context-specific framework for health-enabling food environments embedded in cocreation theory.

Methods: A 3-stage multimethod framework for the coproduction and prototyping of public health interventions was followed in an iterative manner during the development of the framework.

Healthy Food Prices Increased More Than the Prices of Unhealthy Options during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Concurrent Challenges to the Food System.

Food prices have escalated due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems, and other regional shocks and stressors including climate change and war. Few studies have applied a health lens to identify the most affected foods. This study aimed to assess costs and affordability of habitual (unhealthy) diets and recommended (healthy, equitable and more sustainable) diets and their components in Greater Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from 2019 to 2022 using the Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing protocol.

Cost and affordability of healthy, equitable and more sustainable diets in the Torres Strait Islands.

Objectives: To assess the cost, cost differential and affordability of current and recommended (healthy, equitable, culturally acceptable and more sustainable) diets in the Torres Strait Islands and compare with other Queensland locations.

Methods: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healthy Diets ASAP (Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing) methods protocol was applied in five randomly selected communities in the Torres Strait Islands.

Results: The current diet was 32% more expensive than that recommended; 'discretionary' foods comprised 64% of the current diet cost.

Affordability of Heathy, Equitable and More Sustainable Diets in Low-Income Households in Brisbane before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased food insecurity worldwide, yet there has been limited assessment of shifts in the cost and affordability of healthy, equitable and sustainable diets. This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and income supplements provided by the Australian government on diet cost and affordability for low-income households in an Australian urban area. The Healthy Diets ASAP method protocol was applied to assess the cost and cost differential of current and recommended diets before (in 2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (late 2020) for households with a minimum-wage and welfare-only disposable household income, by area of socioeconomic disadvantage, in Greater Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Dietary Intake, Cost, and Affordability by Socioeconomic Group in Australia.

Few Australians consume diets consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines. A major problem is high intake of discretionary food and drinks (those not needed for health and high in saturated fat, added sugar, salt and/or alcohol). Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) suffer particularly poor diet-related health.

Costing recommended (healthy) and current (unhealthy) diets in urban and inner regional areas of Australia using remote price collection methods.

Objective: To compare the cost and affordability of two fortnightly diets (representing the national guidelines and current consumption) across areas containing Australia's major supermarkets.

Design: The Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing protocol was used.

Setting: Price data were collected online and via phone calls in fifty-one urban and inner regional locations across Australia.

Cost and Affordability of Healthy, Equitable and Sustainable Diets in Low Socioeconomic Groups in Australia.

Few Australians consume a healthy, equitable and more sustainable diet consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADGs). Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) suffer particularly poor diet-related health problems. However, granular information on dietary intakes and affordability of recommended diets was lacking for low SEGs.

Affordability of current, and healthy, more equitable, sustainable diets by area of socioeconomic disadvantage and remoteness in Queensland: insights into food choice.

Background: Poor diet is the leading preventable risk factor contributing to the burden of disease globally and in Australia, and is inequitably distributed. As the price of healthy foods is a perceived barrier to improved diets, evidence on the cost and affordability of current (unhealthy) and recommended (healthy, more equitable and sustainable) diets is required to support policy action.

Methods: This study applied the Healthy Diets ASAP (Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing) methods protocol to measure the cost, cost differential and affordability of current and recommended diets for a reference household in Queensland, Australia.

A systematic scoping review of the habitual dietary costs in low socioeconomic groups compared to high socioeconomic groups in Australia.

Background: Low socioeconomic groups (SEGs) in Australia are less likely to consume diets consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADGs) and suffer poorer health than the broader population. The unaffordability, or perceived high cost, of healthy diets may be a factor. Detailed data on the cost of habitually consumed diets is required in order to inform strategies to alleviate socioeconomic impacts on dietary intake.

Maitjara Wangkanyi: Insights from an Ethnographic Study of Food Practices of Households in Remote Australian Aboriginal Communities.

Many historical, environmental, socioeconomic, political, commercial, and geographic factors underscore the food insecurity and poor diet-related health experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia. Yet, there has been little exploration of Aboriginal food practices or perspectives on food choice recently. This study, with 13 households in remote communities on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, fills this gap using ethnographic and Indigenist methods.

Dietary inequity? A systematic scoping review of dietary intake in low socio-economic groups compared with high socio-economic groups in Australia.

Objective: Low socio-economic groups (SEG) in Australia suffer poorer diet-related health than the rest of the population. Therefore, it is expected that low SEG are less likely to consume diets conforming to Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADG) than higher SEG. However, dietary intake of low SEG in Australia has not been synthesised methodically.

Streamlined data-gathering techniques to estimate the price and affordability of healthy and unhealthy diets under different pricing scenarios.

Objective: To determine the reliability of streamlined data-gathering techniques for examining the price and affordability of a healthy (recommended) and unhealthy (current) diet. We additionally estimated the price and affordability of diets across socio-economic areas and quantified the influence of different pricing scenarios.

Design: Following the Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing (ASAP) protocol, we compared a cross-sectional sample of food and beverage pricing data collected using online data and phone calls (lower-resource streamlined techniques) with data collected in-store from the same retailers.

A tale of two cities: the cost, price-differential and affordability of current and healthy diets in Sydney and Canberra, Australia.

Background: The perception that healthy foods are more expensive than unhealthy foods has been reported widely to be a key barrier to healthy eating. However, assessment of the relative cost of healthy and unhealthy foods and diets is fraught methodologically. Standardised approaches to produce reliable data on the cost of total diets and different dietary patterns, rather than selected foods, are lacking globally to inform policy and practice.

Testing the Price of Healthy and Current Diets in Remote Aboriginal Communities to Improve Food Security: Development of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healthy Diets ASAP (Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing) Methods.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples suffer higher rates of food insecurity and diet-related disease than other Australians. However, assessment of food insecurity in specific population groups is sub-optimal, as in many developed countries. This study tailors the Healthy Diets ASAP (Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing) methods protocol to be more relevant to Indigenous groups in assessing one important component of food security.

Healthy Diets in Rural Victoria-Cheaper than Unhealthy Alternatives, Yet Unaffordable.

Rural communities experience higher rates of obesity and reduced food security compared with urban communities. The perception that healthy foods are expensive contributes to poor dietary choices. Providing an accessible, available, affordable healthy food supply is an equitable way to improve the nutritional quality of the diet for a community, however, local food supply data are rarely available for small rural towns.

Healthy diets ASAP - Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing methods protocol.

Background: This paper describes the rationale, development and final protocol of the Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing (ASAP) method which aims to assess, compare and monitor the price, price differential and affordability of healthy (recommended) and current (unhealthy) diets in Australia. The protocol is consistent with the International Network for Food and Obesity / non-communicable Diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support's (INFORMAS) optimal approach to monitor food price and affordability globally.

Methods: The Healthy Diets ASAP protocol was developed based on literature review, drafting, piloting and revising, with key stakeholder consultation at all stages, including at a national forum.

Costing 'healthy' food baskets in Australia - a systematic review of food price and affordability monitoring tools, protocols and methods.

Objective: To undertake a systematic review to determine similarities and differences in metrics and results between recently and/or currently used tools, protocols and methods for monitoring Australian healthy food prices and affordability.

Design: Electronic databases of peer-reviewed literature and online grey literature were systematically searched using the PRISMA approach for articles and reports relating to healthy food and diet price assessment tools, protocols, methods and results that utilised retail pricing.

Setting: National, state, regional and local areas of Australia from 1995 to 2015.