Cheaper food can take toll on the waistline

Cheaper food may be good for the bank balance but not so good for a person's health, a study by two Wellington researchers suggests.

Nick Wilson and Osman Mansoor said the prices found in their study provided another explanation for health inequalities in this country.

The researchers are calling for the Government to take "substantive action" such as regulation and taxing saturated food.

"This pilot study suggests that current pricing favours consumption of higher saturated-fat content foods," they said in a letter in the latest issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal.

"It also suggests the need for policy responses beyond existing approaches being considered by the Ministry of Health."

Saturated fat is a risk factor for diabetes and coronary heart disease.

US Government nutrition guidelines for this year recommend decreasing saturated fat intakes to less than 10 per cent of calories.

In their letter, the researchers suggested prices were a factor in food-buying decisions, and could influence what people ate.

The highest priority for analysis was probably deciding which approaches would be most likely to make lowest saturated fat options the cheapest, they said.

Possible approaches included encouraging the food industry to do so, regulating to require it, and taxing the saturated fat content.

"The latter option has the advantage of generating revenue that could fund healthy school lunches and fruit and vegetable vouchers for low-income New Zealanders," they said.

"Despite the expected resistance from commercial vested interests, the time is more than ripe for substantive Government action to control the epidemics of diabetes and obesity."

The pilot study involved comparing prices of selected foods high in saturated fat to see if pricing favoured saturated fat consumption.

The researchers had identified nine ready-to-eat food types where at least one product had 20g or more saturated fat per 100g.

The products were available in two large Wellington supermarket stores from different chains.

The food types included butter, butter/vegetable oil blends, margarine-type spreads, cream cheese, hard cheese, grated cheese, cream, biscuits and crackers, and chocolate.

For each food type they identified the items with the highest and lowest levels of saturated fat and compared prices.

The highest saturated fat food was cheaper than its low-saturated fat equivalent of the same food type for eight of the nine comparisons at one supermarket, and in six out of nine comparisons at the other, the researchers said.

Combining all nine food types, the low-saturated fats foods cost 49 per cent more at the first supermarket, and 22 per cent more at the second.

They said a more comprehensive and sophisticated analysis might be appropriate, such as looking, for example, at total energy and protein content, and beneficial provision of healthier fats such as mono-unsaturates.

Dr Wilson is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago's Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences and Dr Mansoor is a public health physician.

- NZPA