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A new economic model has been developed to identify the nutritionally best diet for each member within a family. The model, created by researchers at the ������app of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University College London, considers, for any given household, the prices of foods accessible to them, their food budget, and the nutritional needs of everyone in the family.

Using this information, the model can create the ‘nutritionally best’ food basket and show the healthiest way to distribute this food among all members within a family. This model can be used by nutritionists working to support households’ ability to cope with climate shocks and volatile food environments. The model was applied to dataset from rural Bangladesh to identify the best level of nutrition that households could afford without increasing their costs, and to compare this against the food choices and allocations that families currently choose.

, results showed that costs were not a major constraint for healthy diets, contrary to the current understanding in nutrition and economics research. The authors argue that most households could theoretically afford a diet that met nearly all the basic nutritional requirements for each member.

Malnourishment was due to other factors, most notably the type of food being bought. Large improvements in dietary quality are possible by swapping nutrient-poor foods like fried foods and sugary snacks for nutritious foods like vegetables and fish. Swapping more expensive staple foods for cheaper varieties (notably swapping rice for wheat flour) would also help households to afford more of these nutritious foods.

As such changes could be made without an increase to household budgets, the findings highlight how poverty is not the only limit on people’s diets and that a more nuanced understanding of what drives food choices is required even for the poorest families.

The authors also analysed gender inequality in diets, as large gender gaps have been found in other parts of South Asia and older studies from Bangladesh, where men receive higher quality diets at the expense of women’s health. However, their results in Bangladesh contrasted this phenomenon. 

Generally, women were more likely to have an excess of calories, and men were more likely to face a deficit. This shows how issues around nutrition are dependent on specific cultural circumstances, and that these gender norms are changing over time. It also provides a specific guide for policymakers in Bangladesh to provide culturally appropriate opportunities for women to exercise.   

An important exception was found in pregnant or breastfeeding women, who were found to have some key nutritional deficiencies not accounted for by households. Creating programmes and interventions to tackle this deficiency is especially important in preventing long-term, developmental health issues and ending the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition.

Helen Harris-Fry, Associate Professor at LSHTM, said: “Families around the world face very difficult decisions about how to feed their families -- faced with low incomes, heavy workloads, unequal gender norms, and unhealthy food environments. It’s important to emphasise that this model is not designed to place judgement on families’ choices, but instead to benchmark what diets are possible, understand the trade-offs that families are facing, and to help support these families under difficult circumstances.”

The authors hope that this model can be subsequently applied to a range of different countries, and to support policy-making efforts in improving nutrition and eradicating food poverty.

Publication

Harris-Fry H, Cortina-Borja M. . Journal of Development Economics, 2025. DOI: