While the price of fuel and electricity have been making headlines for their impact on a potential rate rise next month, the health impacts of the budgetary decisions many Australians are being forced to make could be fuelling a nutritional crisis, with 380,000 WA households struggling to put food on the table.
The Foodbank Hunger Report 2023 revealed that in the last 12 months, 250,000 WA households experienced severe food insecurity, with 85% of those facing food insecurity in the state attributing the extra struggle to the rising cost of living.
To put that in perspective, 43% of WA households with a mortgage experienced food insecurity last year, up from only 23% in the preceding year, and Foodbank warned that given the current trend, “by the end of 2023 we face the reality of half the Australian population having experienced difficulty in meeting the most basic of needs – food.”
“The overall food security level has trended down across states and territories in 2023, with WA reporting the most significant hit (from 70% in 2022 down to 63% in 2023),” the report said.
Already, 23% of Australian households skip meals or whole days of eating and according to the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score 2015-2023, the average national diet score was down from 56 in 2015 to 55 out of 100 this year, with a result of 54.8 for WA.
The greatest decrease was reported in older adults, yet the diet quality of older adults was still better than younger Australians, with 7 points differentiating 18–50-year-olds and those over 70 years (53 vs 60 respectively) – Generation X and Y had lower scores than Baby boomers and the Silent Generation.
Alongside retirees those working in the fitness industry had the highest average diet scores (59 out of 100), while construction workers, people employed in logistics and operations, and the unemployed had the lowest scores (51 out of 100).
Healthcare workers faired marginally better, with an average score of 56.8.
Concerningly, one of the lowest scoring components was vegetable consumption at 58 out of 100, with only four out of 10 adults always eating three or more different vegetables at their main meal – a decrease from 47% in 2016 to 35% in 2023 – though women scored 8 points higher on the vegetable component than men (62 vs 54 out of 100).
In their response to the current fiscal budget Dietitians Australia submitted that an estimated $1.4 billion of healthcare expenditure in 2015-16 was attributable to insufficient vegetable with some 28,000 preventable deaths caused by unhealthy eating per year.
“Adherence to dietary guidelines may reduce prevalence and impact of diseases such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity and other diet-related diseases, thus reducing overall health spending and additional indirect costs of these diseases,” the document noted.
“With less than 4% of the population eating a diet consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines, it is crucial that the time and effort put into the reviewed Guidelines is translated into real action to support healthy diets.
“Campaigns, programs, initiatives and other actions must be evaluated to indicate the returns of Government investments in terms of population health, community wellbeing and financial implications.”
However, with West Australian grocery prices seeing the biggest increase in Australia at more than 33% (from $129 to $179) and Australia’s National Food Supply Chain Alliance forecasting an 8% increase throughout the rest of the year, Foodbank noted that food would “continue to be the most likely thing to be sacrificed to make ends meet.”
Cost of living was rated the topmost important issue Australians were concerned about over the last year – even more so for nearly two thirds of Food Insecure households – with the cost of living the most common reason for food insecurity in 2023.
As travel and disaster-driven food insecurity appeared to recede, even more food insecure households now perceived the cost of living as the key contributor to their situation and to cope, 94% of food insecure households reported cutting back on food in the last 12 months.
“We ran out of the basics like bread, fruit, and milk,” one respondent reported. “We managed to get some tinned food to get us through, but it was not enough to help keep the kids full.”
For more than three quarters of the Australians living with food insecurity in 2023 this has been their first experience for the first time 90% coped by altering their food budget, with meat and other sources of protein the first items dropped from household consumption.
“Demand for emergency food relief has risen as people experience reduced income from loss of work, and our supermarket shelves are going bare due to supply issues,” Dieticians Australia said.
“Yet If it was easier for Australians to enjoy healthy foods and drinks consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines, the disease burden amongst the community would be reduced by 62% for coronary heart disease, 34-38% for stroke, 41% for type 2 diabetes, 37% for mouth, pharyngeal and laryngeal cancer, 22-29% for bowel cancer, 20% for oesophageal cancer, 12% for prostate cancer, 8% for lung cancer and 2% for stomach cancer.”