Measuring food access using least-cost diets: Results for global monitoring and targeting of interventions to improve food security, nutrition and health

Benchmark diets using the most affordable locally available items to meet health and nutrition needs have long been used to guide food choice and nutrition assistance. This paper describes the result of recent innovations scaling up the use of such least-cost diets by UN agencies, the World Bank, and national governments for a different purpose, which is monitoring food environments and targeting systemic interventions to improve a population's access to sufficient food for an active and healthy life. Measuring food access using least-cost diets allows a clearer understanding of where poor diets are caused by unavailability or high prices for even the lowest-cost healthy foods, insufficient income or other resources to acquire those foods, or the use of other foods instead due to reasons such as time use and meal preparation costs, or cultural factors such as taste and aspirations. This paper reviews the data, methods and results that have led to official FAO and the World Bank adoption of cost and affordability metrics for global monitoring, and the parallel use of similar methods to guide interventions in country studies led by the World Food Programme with partner agencies across Africa, Asia and Latin America. We conclude by summarizing how increasing availability of food price data, matched to food composition and dietary requirements, allows analysts to use recently developed software tools for least-cost diet assessment to improve food access in a wide range of settings.