Food Prices Affect Your Weight

We are continually torn between vowing to exercise more and eat healthier -but then succumbing to temptation. A new US Agriculture Department study suggests that food pricing plays a role in our decision-making. Unhealthy food gets less expensive while healthy food, particularly fruits and vegetables, get more costly.

The opportunity, according to the study, is that changes of just a few cents can affect consumer purchase decisions.Authorities continue to remind us that eating greens, nuts and other natural products is better for us. And sales of organic products have skyrocketed. But people who shop in dollar stores do so for a reason - and are unlikely to be found in Whole Foods.

Morgan Clendaniel reports in Fast Company on the relationship between food costs and health, suggesting that decreasing the price of foods that are good for you might be more effective than taxing foods that are not. JL:

That Americans don't eat as healthy as they could isn't a surprising fact. But it turns out that tiny economic shifts can make that problem worse, or make it better. Just a few cents difference in price can make unhealthy foods--sodas, sugary snacks--either more appealing or less appealing and has a measurable effect on people's weight. And cheaper prices on healthy foods make people skinnier, even if bad-for-you foods stay the same price.

A new report from the USDA looked at the body mass index (BMI) of children and how it changed in response to food prices. Unsurprisingly, if prices increased 10% for soda, children's BMIs dropped .42%. That's 50% of a 8-year-old's normal weight gain for a year. That seems like a fairly large argument for a soda tax, but the study also found that helping people buy healthy food may be even more effective than penalizing them for buying unhealthy food.
If the price of 100% juice decreases 10%, BMIs decreased .3%. The same process works for lowfat milk (.35% decrease) and dark, leafy vegetables (.28% decrease). Making those healthy foods easier to buy does wonders for a child's weight, as their parents grativate toward them. Sadly, a look at food prices over the last 20 years shows that the price of fruits and vegetables has risen astronomically compared to the price of carbonated beverages. Perhaps dark, leafy greens could use some subsidies.