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Food costs for the current and recommended diet of German infants, children and adolescents
Author(s) -
Kersting Mathilde,
Hellert Wolfgang Sichert,
Kaiser Barbara,
Manz Friedrich,
Schöch Gerhard
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of consumer studies and home economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.775
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1470-6431
pISSN - 0309-3891
DOI - 10.1111/j.1470-6431.1998.tb00716.x
Subject(s) - environmental health , food group , medicine , food intake , german , food science , toxicology , biology , geography , archaeology
Higher food costs of a recommended diet may be a barrier to the improvement of unhealthy dietary habits. For the assessment of food costs for children, age‐specific dietary intakes as well as average food prices must be known. This study is based on the measured food intake from a total of 1668 3‐day weighed diet records of children aged from 5 months to 18 years and on recommended dietary intakes for these age groups. Based on the food costs related to the energy intake (Deutschmarks per megajoule; DM per MJ), the recommended diet using common food products does not incur higher costs than the current diet in all age groups. For infants, a diet using commercial infant food conforming to the restrictive German pesticide regulations incurs 50–150% higher food costs than the use of home‐made meals. For children and adolescents, the nutritionally inferior quality of the current diet can be improved by a price‐balanced interchange of foods, mainly by favouring plant foods instead of meat and confectionery.