Is a healthy diet affordable and accessible in the city of Yarra, Victoria-Australia? An analysis of cost disparity and nutritional choices

This study aimed to examine cost disparity and nutritional choices within the City of Yarra (Yarra), targeting three suburbs that have low- and high-rise estates: Richmond, Fitzroy, and Collingwood. The healthy food basket (HFB) was modeled on the Queensland Healthy Food Access Basket for a six-person family for a fortnight and was constructed to include food items that are common to ethnic groups living in Yarra. The HFB food item costs were sampled across 29 food outlets in Yarra. The average cost of HFB per fortnight for a family of six was significantly lower in Richmond (Mean = $419.26) than in Coflingwood (Mean = $519.28) and in Fitzroy (Mean = $433.98). While costs for cereal groups, dairy, meats and alternatives, and non-core were comparable across the suburbs, significant differences were noticed for fruit, legumes and vegetables. Geographic location alone explained 54% of the variance in HFB price (172,26 = 15.23, p < 0.001) and 32.7% in the variance of fruit, vegetable and legumes (F-2,F-26 = 7.72, p < 0.001). The effect of geographic location remained consistent after controlling for the type of food outlets. The type of food outlets had a non-significant effect on the variance of prices. Richmond had a greater number variety of fruit, vegetables, and legumes (F-2,F-26 = 5.7, p < 0.01) and an overall lower number of missing items (F-2,F-26 = 3.9, p < 0.05) than Collingwood and Fitzroy. The diversity of food available in the three suburbs was more likely to reflect the Vietnamese, Chinese and East-Timorese shopping pattern than the rest of other ethnic groups. These findings indicate that there is inequality in food access in terms of cost and availability in Yarra and such inequality is function of location and not the type of food outlets. The differential economic access to a HFB in Yarra could be addressed using a multi-faceted approach, including implementing policies that encourage diversity of food outlets and putting in place incentive-based policies to encourage the consumption of fruit, vegetables and legumes, and taking actions toward promoting supply of ethnic foods.