States With Highest, Lowest Cost Of Healthy Diet In Nigeria

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has disclosed that the National Average Cost of a Healthy Diet (CoHD) per adult a day stood at N938 in February 2024.

Naija News reports that the NBS, in its CoHD report for February 2024, released on Friday in Abuja, also listed states with the highest and lowest CoHD in Nigeria.

The bureau 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 to measure physical and economic access to healthy diets, excluding the cost of transportation and meal preparation.

According to the bureau, data on Retail Food Prices, Food Composition Data, and Healthy Diet Standards were required to compute the CoHD indicator.

The NBS also said that in February, the average CoHD was highest in the southwest at ₦1, 157 per adult per day, followed by the southeast at ₦1, 077 per day.

It said the lowest average CoHD was recorded in the North-West at N723 per adult daily.

The NBS further said that at the state level, Ekiti, Lagos, and Osun recorded the highest CoHD at ₦1, 295, ₦1, 195, and ₦1, 184, respectively.

However, Katsina recorded the lowest at N673, followed by Sokoto and Zamfara at N714 and N720, respectively.

The report added that animal-source foods were the most expensive food group recommendation to meet in February, accounting for 38 per cent of the total CoHD to provide 13 per cent of the total calories.