Cost of Eating Healthy Diet in Nigeria Jumps 19.2% to N1,241

By Adedapo Adesanya

The average cost for a Nigerian to eat a healthy diet increased by 19.2 per cent to N1,241 in June compared with the N1,041 recorded in May 2024, data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its latest edition of the Cost Of Healthy Diet Report for June has revealed.

The Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) is the least expensive combination of locally available items that meet globally consistent food-based dietary guidelines. It is 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.

This comes as Nigeria’s inflation hit a 28-year high of 34.19 per cent in June 2024, an increase of 0.24 per cent from the points compared to the inflation figure for May 2024 released by the NBS.

The CoHD has been steadily rising over the past six months, since January 2024, meaning that in recent months, the metric has risen faster than Nigeria’s headline inflation and food inflation.

In June 2024, the CoHD was 45 per cent higher than in January 2024 at N858. It was also 19 per cent higher than the cost in May 2024 at N1,041.

Providing a further analysis, the NBS report showed that in June 2024, the average CoHD was highest in the South West at N1,545 per adult per day, compared to N956 per adult per day in North West, which was the lowest. The South-South Zone came in second N1,376 per day.

At the State level, Southwestern states led by Ekiti, Ogun and Osun States recorded the highest cost with N1,640, N1,599, and N1,557 respectively while Katsina, Kano and Jigawa – in the Northwest – accounted for the lowest costs with N878, 926 and N937 respectively.

Animal source foods were the most expensive food group recommendation to meet in June, accounting for 35 per cent of the total CoHD to provide 13 per cent of the total calories.

Fruits and vegetables were the most expensive food groups in terms of price per calorie; they accounted for 11 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively, of total CoHD while providing only seven per cent and five per cent of total calories in the Healthy Diet Basket. Legumes, Nuts and Seeds were the least-expensive food group on average, at seven per cent of the total cost.

The main drivers of this increase in CoHD are vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, and starchy staples.