The high cost of healthy eating is underlined in a recent United Nations report, capturing a reality also felt in Cyprus. Eating healthily requires digging deeper into your pocket, an option not available to every citizen given the rising cost of living. At the same time, as clinical dietitians and nutritionists tell Politis, the high cost of healthy eating brings wider public health problems, as people turn to less healthy choices on a limited budget, while the cost to the wider economy is also significant.
One in three people cannot afford to eat healthily, according to a report jointly prepared by five specialised UN agencies. In 2025, around 2.69 billion people could not afford a healthy diet. The average global cost of a healthy diet was calculated at 4.28 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars per person per day.
Subsidising diabetes
The share of people who cannot afford to maintain a healthy diet remains "extremely high," said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the report's authors. He noted that government policies have typically focused on subsidising cereals and staple starchy foods, rather than meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables. "That means calories, but not dietary variety," he said, pointing to the impact this has on obesity rates and diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Data from the World Health Organization, another UN agency behind the report, shows that adult obesity rose from 12.1% in 2012 to 16.2% in 2024.
The economic reality
According to the president of the Cyprus Dietitians and Nutritionists Association, Professor of Clinical Dietetics and Nutrition at the University of Nicosia, Dr Eleni Andreou, the recent UN report highlights a particularly important public health issue. "Today it is not enough to look at whether people have enough food," she notes. "We need to look at whether they have economic access to a healthy, balanced, varied and nutritionally adequate diet."
A healthy diet, she points out, does not necessarily mean expensive "superfoods," organic products or specialised foods. On the contrary, she notes, the traditional Mediterranean diet offers many examples of highly nutritious foods that can be relatively affordable, pulses, seasonal fruit and vegetables, wholegrain cereals, potatoes, eggs, yoghurt, small fish, nuts and olive oil in appropriate quantities.
However, she stresses, "we cannot ignore the economic reality. For a family on a limited income, the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, dairy and other nutritious foods can take up a significant part of the household budget."
By contrast, she notes, "many foods that are high in energy density and lower in nutritional value can provide a lot of calories relatively cheaply. So a person may consume adequate, or even excessive, calories while their diet remains poor in fibre, vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients."
What does poor nutrition actually cost us?
According to Dr Andreou, unhealthy eating, together with other modifiable risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, high blood pressure, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, contributes significantly to the development of non communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain forms of cancer.
The WHO European Region records around 1.8 million preventable deaths from non communicable diseases every year. Around 60% of these are linked to preventable causes, such as smoking, harmful alcohol use, high blood pressure, unhealthy diet, obesity and physical inactivity.
Productivity losses linked to these preventable deaths alone are estimated by the WHO at more than 514.5 billion dollars a year across the European Region.
Cardiovascular disease is a characteristic example. A study in the European Heart Journal estimated it cost the EU economy around €282 billion in 2021, or around €630 per European citizen. Of that total cost, 46% was healthcare spending, 28% informal care, 17% productivity losses and 9% social care. For Cyprus, the same study put the total economic cost at around €381 per resident.
Making the healthy choice the affordable one
On Cyprus specifically, Dr Andreou notes that the rising cost of living and of food can affect everyday dietary choices, particularly for economically vulnerable families, older people, single parent households and people already dealing with health problems.
"We cannot, therefore, place the entire responsibility on the individual by simply telling them to 'eat more healthily.' People also need the financial means to do so," she notes. As Dr Andreou argues, we need to make the healthy choice easier, more available and more affordable.
"We need policies that make it easier to access fruit, vegetables, pulses, dairy, fish and other nutritious foods, particularly for economically vulnerable groups. We need support for local and seasonal production, a more efficient supply chain, reduced food waste and meaningful nutrition education from childhood onward."
At the same time, she says, consumers can be taught to eat healthily at a lower cost, by planning meals and shopping in advance, choosing seasonal produce, using pulses and other affordable protein sources more often, comparing prices and making better use of food to cut down on waste. "Healthy eating should not be a luxury. It is a fundamental element of prevention and public health," she stresses.
We should not only be asking "how much does it cost to eat healthily?" We should also be asking "how much does it cost us as a society not to eat healthily?" International data, according to the expert, shows that the second cost can be far greater.
"Investing in healthy eating, in nutrition education, in prevention and early intervention is not simply an expense. It is an investment in the health of the population, in the sustainability of GESY and in our country's economy," she stresses.
Cost makes healthy eating harder
The cost of food is one of the key factors affecting our dietary choices, Assistant Professor of Clinical Dietetics at the European University Cyprus, Dr Elena Hadjibey, tells Politis.
"First, it's important to define what we mean by a healthy diet. One of the most recognised models of healthy eating is the Mediterranean diet, characterised by generous consumption of seasonal fruit and vegetables, pulses and cereals, adequate protein intake from both plant and animal sources, such as pulses, dairy, fish and meat, with olive oil as the main source of fat. At the same time, its core principles are variety, seasonality, a preference for local foods and for foods that are as minimally processed as possible," she says.
Research data, according to Dr Hadjibey, shows that the cost of food is one of the significant factors affecting our dietary choices, particularly for people on lower incomes. At the same time, she adds, higher quality dietary patterns have been shown to come at a higher cost, while foods high in energy density, rich in fat and or sugar, can often be cheaper sources of energy. International literature has shown, for example, that healthier dietary patterns can cost more than less healthy ones.
"In an environment of rising food prices, the financial burden can therefore make it harder to adopt and maintain a healthy diet. And this matters a great deal, because healthy eating should not be treated as a luxury, nor purely as a matter of individual choice. Our dietary choices are shaped by many factors, including income, prices and food availability," she stresses.
Promoting healthy eating, she notes, therefore cannot be limited to informing and educating the consumer. "We also need policies that make nutritious foods more accessible and more affordable for everyone."
INFO
The annual report was presented in Rome on 21 July 2026 by five specialised UN agencies, focused on understanding and addressing the high cost of healthy eating. The report, "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World," is jointly prepared by the following specialised agencies:
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
IFAD: International Fund for Agricultural Development
UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund
WFP: World Food Programme
WHO: World Health Organization
According to UN criteria, a diet is considered economically unaffordable when its cost exceeds 52% of a household's total daily income.
