Does eating healthy for people and planet save money?

The EAT Lancet’s Planetary health diet has come under the limelight yet again with Deakin researchers indicating that the diet could in fact save Australians $1800 per year. While their findings showed that low socioeconomic households would spend less of their income on the planetary health diet compared to the typical Australian diet, the diet may not be accessible in other parts of the world. For example, in India, the average daily calorie and protein consumption are well below the recommended intakes and only the richest 5% are consuming the recommended calorie intake. It is also important to note that while affordability is the focus here, we know sustainable diets are more encompassing than this:

Sustainable diets are those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources.
FAO, 2010, Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity.

 Refer to recent media: Healthy eating done cheap: University team cracks the formula, It turns out healthier eating could save your family $1800 a year