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The Cost of a Healthful Diet
Author(s) -
Kennedy Eileen,
Racsa Patrick,
Wilde Parke,
Dallal Gerard E,
Jacques Paul,
Lichtenstein Alice H,
Goldberg Jeanne,
Hyatt Raymond R,
Aitken Stuart,
Johnson Reed
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.4.a619
Subject(s) - nutrient density , nutrient , liberian dollar , categorization , energy density , food group , environmental health , mathematics , computer science , statistics , business , medicine , engineering , biology , artificial intelligence , ecology , finance , engineering physics
The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPyramid recommend nutrient density as an approach for consumers to achieve nutrient adequacy while avoiding over‐consumption of energy. However, from a public health perspective nutrient density is a difficult concept to communicate to the general public. This is particularly true when applying nutrient density to purchase decisions. Three models to calculate Food Quality Scores (FQS), measures of nutrient densities for individual foods, were developed. Added to these models were factors to calculate cost per nutrient. The FQS’s were applied to the USDA database and a commercial database of consumer buying patterns from food purchases of 30 millions customers. The FQS’s for each food item were robust across the three algorithms and categorization of items into good, better, best, was similar among the models. However, based on these FQS’s, there were substantial differences in FQS per dollar spent. When nutrient density per dollar spent is used to rank items, there is wide variation in foods within the same food group.