Measuring food security, access and affordability

This research project was the first time the cost and affordability of the entire diet of low socioeconomic groups in Australia was assessed in terms of both healthy (recommended) and unhealthy (habitual) diets. It has highlighted the considerable influence of price on the eating patterns of our lowest income earners and the reality that healthy diets remain unaffordable for many families with children.

This was an issue close to Meron’s heart well before the perfect storm of extreme weather events, natural disasters, a global pandemic and warfare tipped us into an ever-increasing cost-of-living crisis. As a single mother with young children, she knew all too well the struggle of making a food budget stretch. She was determined to find a better balance for others in her position by tackling the issue as a mature aged dietetics student.

It’s important in the work that we do that there’s always a practical aspect to it. I’ve heard some people talk about it being a pracademic. It’s always having a focus on what you’re trying to do, why are you trying to do it, what benefit can you give to the people who really need it.

Dr Meron Lewis

This PhD built on Meron’s previous work with Professor Amanda Lee to develop the Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing (ASAP) methods protocol as a standardised way of measuring and comparing the price and affordability of different diets in Australia.

She tailored the protocol for low socioeconomic groups to understand the importance of price in people’s choice of foods and potentially effective policy responses to help people make healthy food choices. Her study found that while all socioeconomic groups have a similar intake of unhealthy food and drink, low socioeconomic groups face the added difficulty of needing to spend 30-60% of their income for a healthy diet.

In addition to her research for the PhD project, Meron has also used the modified protocol to assess diet affordability in welfare-dependent households, before and after the COVID pandemic, and before and after modest increases in government welfare payments introduced in early September 2023. This work found that increases in welfare payments were insufficient to meaningfully improve the affordability of healthy diets in the most vulnerable Australians.

When we measured the cost of the healthy and the unhealthy habitual diets between 2021 and 2022, the cost of the healthy diet increased almost twice as much as the cost of the habitual diet. So that just puts even further pressure on people, in trying to afford healthy food.

Dr Meron Lewis

Meron’s work is now being used by advocacy organisations such as the Queensland Council of Social Services to calculate food budgets for living affordability reports.

She is passionate about the need to keep monitoring and benchmarking this important issue and to look at more specific groups such as international students or refugees or recent immigrants who struggle with income as well as sourcing culturally appropriate food.

Read the findings brief on this research project here.

Discover more insights from Meron in her interview with our Prevention Works podcast here.