--- title: Cheaper Health Foods Could Save Millions of Lives description: Researchers calculate how life-saving a few cents can be canonical: https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-01T22:00:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T15:30:17.031Z article:section: Health og:title: Lowering Prices of Healthy Foods Could Save Millions of Lives og:description: Researchers calculate how life-saving a few cents can be og:url: https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113d1df2597aba42/69887218cf40a81b17c40c11/50-healthiest-foods-dandelion-greens1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1400 og:image:height: 788 og:image:alt: healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, dandelion greens og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Lowering Prices of Healthy Foods Could Save Millions of Lives twitter:description: Researchers calculate how life-saving a few cents can be twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113d1df2597aba42/69887218cf40a81b17c40c11/50-healthiest-foods-dandelion-greens1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Cheaper Healthy Food Would Save Millions of Lives > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 1, 2016 10:00 PM UTC  Danny Kim for TIME  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 1, 2016 10:00 PM UTC It’s one thing to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables, but quite another to help them actually afford them. Study after study shows that fresh plant-based foods can lead to healthier hearts and fewer health problems, but for many, the produce aisles are economically out of reach. In order to spur manufacturers and policy makers to make fruits and vegetables more affordable, researchers led by Dr. Thomas Gaziano at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School calculated exactly how much benefit reducing the cost of produce would have on heart disease rates. **MORE:** [17 Cheap Organic Foods You Should Be Buying](http://time.com/4200201/cheap-organic-foods/) In a presentation at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology/Lifestyle meeting, they reported that a 10% drop in prices could prevent 515,000 heart-related deaths and 675,000 heart attacks and strokes by 2035\. That amounts to about one more serving of fruits or vegetables a week. If that were increased to one additional serving a day, that could prevent up to 3.5 million deaths from heart disease over just two years. Gaziano did his analysis while taking into account other factors such as aging, weight and blood pressure trends. He hopes that the calculations will highlight how important lifestyle factors such as diet are in influencing heart disease rates and deaths, and how even one more serving a day can prevent a significant number of deaths. **MORE:** [The Pros and Cons of Food Stamps At Farmers’ Markets](http://time.com/2838629/the-pros-and-cons-of-food-stamps-at-farmers-markets/) Such data could be important for food assistance programs such as SNAP, and help families to incorporate more fresh foods into their diet and lower their risk of developing heart problems. “This shows that just changing your diet by eating one more piece of fruit or one more serving of vegetables a week can reduce your risk of heart problems by a significant amount,” he says. “On a population level, policy makers need to realize that it’s hard to get people to make changes in their diet. But certain policy changes, whether it’s taxes on unhealthy foods or subsidies for healthy ones, can make those choices easier for people and are worth looking into.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/"},"headline":"Cheaper Healthy Food Would Save Millions of Lives","datePublished":"2016-03-01T22:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T15:30:17.031Z","description":"Researchers calculate how life-saving a few cents can be","url":"https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/","keywords":["Heart Disease","Vegetables","Stroke","heart attack","Diet & Nutrition","healthy food","fruits"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113d1df2597aba42/69887218cf40a81b17c40c11/50-healthiest-foods-dandelion-greens1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113d1df2597aba42/69887218cf40a81b17c40c11/50-healthiest-foods-dandelion-greens1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, dandelion greens","caption":"healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, dandelion greens","creditText":"Danny Kim for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/heart-disease/","name":"Heart Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4242944/making-healthier-foods-cheaper-could-save-millions-of-lives/","name":"Cheaper Healthy Food Would Save Millions of Lives"}}]}] ```