Healthy diets not that much more expensive.

• Position: Processed Food - Brief article

The healthiest diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, according to research from Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass. The researchers suggest that unhealthy diets may cost less because food policies have focused on the production of "inexpensive, high volume" commodities, which has led to "a complex network of farming, storage, transportation, processing, manufacturing, and marketing capabilities that favor sales of highly processed food products for maximum industry profit."

Given this reality, they say that creating a similar infrastructure to support production of healthier foods might help increase availability--and reduce the prices--of more healthful diets. "This research provides the most...