Cost of healthy diet stands at N1,035 in April – NBS

The National Average Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) per adult a day stood at N1,035 as of April, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

The NBS revealed this in its CoHD report for April 2024, released on Wednesday in Abuja.

The bureau said the CoHD in April increased by 5.4 percent compared to the N982 recorded in March.

The NBS said the CoHD was the least expensive combination of locally available items that met globally consistent food-based dietary guidelines.

It said it was used as a measure of physical and economic access to healthy diets.

“This is a lower bound (or floor) of the cost per adult per day, excluding the cost of transportation and meal preparation.”

The bureau said that to compute the CoHD indicator, the following data on retail food prices, food composition data, and healthy diet standards were required:.

The NBS also said that in April, the average CoHD was highest in the South-West at N1,406 per adult per day, followed by the South-East at N1,190 per day.

It said the lowest average CoHD was recorded in the North-West at N781 per adult per day.

The NBS further said that at the state level, Ekiti, Ogun, and Osun recorded the highest CoHD at N1,483, N1,447, and N1,417, respectively.

The bureau said Kogi and Katsina recorded the lowest CoHD at N709, followed by Kaduna and Nasarawa at N756 and N769, respectively.

The NBS said CoHD had steadily increased since the first CoHD report by the bureau in October 2023.

“The CoHD in April 2024 is 40 percent higher than what was recorded in October 2023 at N703 and 5 percent higher than the CoHD in Mach 2024, which was N982.

“The food groups that have driven the increases in CoHD the most are vegetables, starchy staples, legumes, nuts and seeds. The cost of meeting the recommendations for oil and fats have changed the least since March 2024.”

The report added that animal-source foods were the most expensive food group recommendation to meet in April , accounting for 36 per cent of the total CoHD and providing 13 per cent of the total calories.

It noted that fruits and vegetables were the most expensive food groups in terms of price per calorie.

“They accounted for 11 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of the total CoHD while providing only seven percent and five percent of total calories in the Healthy Diet Basket.

“Legumes, nuts, and seeds were the least expensive food group on average, at six percent of the total cost.’’

The report also says that in recent months, the CoHD has risen faster than general inflation and food inflation.

“However, the CoHD and the food Consumer Price Index (CPI) are not directly comparable.

“The CoHD includes fewer items and is measured in Naira per day, while the food CPI is a weighted index.”

The NBS said the policy implications of these results would foster collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders, such as policymakers, researchers, and civil society actors that focus on food security.

“These stakeholders will devise strategies that tackle access, availability, and affordability of healthy diets effectively.

"Also, future research incorporating income can also be used to determine the proportion and number of people in the population that are unable to afford a healthy diet,” the report said.