Lower income families struggle more to provide healthy food
Photo: Doron Golan
Low-income families cannot afford healthy food
A new study by the Taub Center finds that not only is healthy food too expensve for low income families, but that the fact they they tend to include more members makes it even more difficult to provide them with nutritional food.
A new report by the Taub Center found that families that rank on the bottom levels of income buy cheaper, less healthy food, and that as the income level becomes lower, families tend to skip on eating fruit and vegetables in favor of grains and foods high in fat.
The study, led by Nutritional Security Council Chairperson and Taub Center Health Plan Chairperson Prof. Dov Chernichovsky, states that a substantial percentage of households in Israel do not purchase the recommended food items, either due to a preference for less healthy foods, or because they cannot afford to maintain a balanced diet.
Food donations for those in need (Photo: Ido Erez)
The Health Ministry’s recommended dietary plan reflects a Mediterranean diet the is mainly plant-based. To ensure a healthy and low-cost diet as much as possible, the Taub Center has comprised a monthly food purchase plan that comes to NIS 844 per adult and NIS 737 per child. The plan includes grains, vegetables, fruit, milk-derived protein, legumes and fat as the major food groups.
The most expensive items on the diet recommended by the Health Ministry are meat-derived proteins and legumes. Their combined cost makes up roughly 40% of the total dietary budget. And while milk-derived protein takes up 11% of the budget, at 4%, fat was found to be the most inexpensive item, which explains some of its appeal.
It should also be noted that a previous study conducted by the Taub Center reflected a sharp rise in food costs between 2005 – 2011. Dairy products, for instance, rose from only being 6% above the average OECD price to 51% higher, while grain and dough-based products rose from 19% to 26%. This makes purchasing food products in general difficult for low-income families.
An additional conclusion from the current study shows that maintaining a healthy diet is also affected by demographics: specifically, it found that the less a family makes, the more members are included in it, which in turn demands that a more food be purchased for them. For instance, the average number of family members in the bottom 10% of the income bracket is 4.37, with an average monthly food budget of NIS3,540. The top 10%, though, has an average of 2.46 members per family, with a monthly food budget of only NIS 2,039.
The difference in income and food consumption patterns are staggering and act as an ever-widening chasm. As another example, the Taub Center study found that families in the bottom 5% income bracket spend 44% of their monthly budget on food recommended by the Health Ministry, while the top 5% spends 7% of their budget on it. As a result, the bottom 15% does not purchase the full food plan recommended by the ministry.
While the average household income at the bottom 5% stands at NIS 3,907, the adjusted, recommended food plan for this income bracket is NIS 3,295. The study, however, found that families at the bottom 5% only spend NIS 1,462 on food a month, most likely since they cannot afford to spend much more on it. As a result they regularly must do without healthy food, which in turn can lead to reduced health.
