In April, Kimberly Hart made a resolution to lose some weight on the advice of her doctor. Hart, who is 61 and lives in New Haven, Connecticut, has high blood pressure and cholesterol. These factors, combined with her age and weight, put her at an elevated risk for developing diabetes, and she wanted to do whatever she could to prevent that from happening.
One element within her control, Hart thought at the time, was her diet. She started seeing a nutritionist, a cost covered by Medicaid, and eating more healthily. But it wasn’t long before her efforts clashed with the reality of rising grocery costs. In May, Hart began to really feel the pinch of higher prices, and by June, she realized she had to completely upend the way she put food on the table for her and her son.
She swapped wheat bread for store-brand white bread, “which is too bad” she said, “because I know that wheat bread is healthier for me, but I also know that white bread is cheaper”. She switched from frozen vegetables to cheaper canned ones, despite lower nutritional value and higher sodium content, and no longer buys fresh fruit. Four months since her April resolution, she said, the scale hasn’t budged.
The more color a plate has the healthier it is, because you get your color from fresh vegetables,” she said. But because of her financial situation, “I can’t really do that Inflation is pushing healthy eating out of reach for millions of people like Hart, a trend that public health experts worry could increase their risk for diet-related diseases in the long run. Over the past year, grocery prices have risen rapidly as agricultural supply chains bowed under the pressure of food scarcity, labor shortages and high fuel costs.
