To assess the impact of integrating processed fruits and vegetables (FV) into diets in terms of diet cost reduction and ensuring nutritional adequacy year-round.

Market surveys were conducted to record foods. Focus group discussions (FGD) and 24-h dietary assessments – from children and women – were carried out to determine culturally accepted dietary habits. Six processed FV were considered for addition to diets. Using the Cost of Diet linear programming tool, standards diets were first modelled, and subsequently, the processed FV were included to analyse their impact.

Rural Tanzania: Mtwara and Morogoro.

Market survey: 50 traders; FGD: 40 women; 24-h recalls: 36 infants aged 6–23 months, 52 children aged 6–13 years and 292 women.

The standard diet costs between TZS 232 and 2368 (USD 0·3–3) daily for infants. For children aged 6–13 years, it costs between TZS 1711 and 7199 (USD 2·2–9·1) daily and the cost for the women was between TZS 2793 and 10 449 (USD 3·5–13·2). Addition of the processed FV reduced diet costs by up to 61 %, 48 % and 49 % for children aged 12–23 months, children aged 6–13 years and women, respectively. However, for infants aged 6–11 months, costs rose by up to 127 %. The processed FV addressed all micronutrient gaps in the diets except for infants aged 6–11 months, where some micronutrient intakes were unfulfilled.

Processed FV could provide a feasible option to ensure availability of nutritious but cheap diets year-round. Hence, interventions to process FV into nutritious and affordable products should extensively be pursued.

Previous studies have shown that highly nutritious diets are more costly, but to date there has been no evaluation of the costs associated with failing to meet micronutrient recommendations in a Spanish population.

We examined whether daily food consumption costs (classified in quintiles) were associated with failing to meet at least three daily nutritional recommendations out of twenty (including fibre and nineteen micronutrients) in a cross-sectional analysis of baseline data of a cohort of 17 197 Spanish university graduates. Micronutrients and fibre intake were assessed with a validated 136-item FFQ. Average cost of food was calculated from official Spanish government data.

As participants presented higher dietary energy cost from their diet, their intake of micronutrients increased significantly. Low dietary energy cost was associated with a higher likelihood of failing to meet three or more recommendations (P for trend <0·001 across quintiles of dietary cost), the association being stronger among female than male participants (P for interaction between sex and quintile of dietary energy cost <0·001).