Around 7 in 10 Americans say high prices have made eating healthy harder

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Sticking to a healthy diet can be incredibly challenging in America, the world’s fast food capital.

Ensuring you have a balanced diet can sometimes feel like a full-time job, while there are also several factors out of our control like genetics, free time, and access to health and unprocessed food.

Now, new data from the Pew Research Center says Americans are also feeling the price pain at their grocery stores, with roughly 7 in 10, or 69 percent, reporting that the increased cost of healthy food in recent years has made it more difficult to eat healthy.

Income disparity

This was particularly true for lower-income adults, a survey conducted from Feb. 24 to March 2 found. However, 90 percent of the survey’s more than 5,100 respondents say healthy food has gotten more expensive in recent years.

High prices are making eating healthy harder for Americans. A Pew Research Center survey found that 69 percent of people who responded said the increased cost of healthy food in recent years has made it more difficult to eat healthy (Getty Images/iStock)

“This gap is especially stark when it comes to Americans who say it’s a lot more difficult to eat healthy,” Pew said. “Nearly half of lower-income Americans (46 percent) say the increased cost makes it a lot more difficult to eat healthy, compared with 15 percent of upper-income adults – a 31-point gap.”

The cost of food has increased steadily since 2020, with prices for food from grocery stores ticking up by 1.2 percent last year and prices of food away from home rising by more than 4 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture. Notably, egg and poultry prices have increased with the continued spread of H5N1 bird flu.

Differences in Access

For those living in rural areas and people with lower incomes, sticker shock may not be the only concern. Access to healthy food is easier for upper-income adults. Equally, larger shares of urban and suburban Americans say they can easily find healthy food nearby, compared with rural Americans.

Although, about two-third of respondents said it was very or somewhat easy to find healthy food close to them.

Adults should consume 1.5-to-two cup-equivalents of fruits and two-to-three cup-equivalents of vegetables daily, according to federal health authorities. But, most U.S. adults to meet recommendations (Getty Images/iStock)

Meeting nutrition guidelines

All of this said, just about 2 in 10 Americans described their own diets of healthy, and a fifth of respondents said their diets are not too or not at all healthy. Just 21 percent said their diets were extremely or very healthy.

Federal health authorities report that only around 12 percent of adults meet the recommendations for fruit and 10 percent meet those for vegetables.

Many U.S. adults have unhealthy diets, Pew notes, with potentially deadly consequences.

“Poor diets are a driver of major public health challenges in the United States, like obesity and heart disease,” the center noted.