The cost of healthy living

By Ryan Mullen

Image of weights by Danielle Cerullo via Unsplash

This article is part of a series which explores how working-class culture in Glasgow is changing. All related articles are available to read on this website. This project was produced by Flora Irvine-Hall, Sasha Main, Ryan Mullen, and Lola Lea.

A recent study by the Food Foundation found that healthy food costs more than double that of less healthy equivalents. Just 1,000 calories of fruit and veg costs £8.80, while the equivalent amount in ready meals and processed foods costs just £4.30.

In an anonymous survey conducted across different social media platforms, 81.8% of people surveyed thought that this was unfair for those on an average salary. One participant said that healthy food “should be cheaper to promote healthy eating”. A different participant was opposed, saying that “they cost more to make so they cost more to buy”. Another came up with an alternative method: “Buy the separate ingredients and learn to cook the meals, it’s cheaper per portion especially if you buy in bulk”.

A vast majority think that it's unfair for people of the working class to be priced out of healthy food.

54.5% of participants did not believe that people are educated well enough on healthy eating, especially in recent times. From 2018-2023 there was a rise in adult obesity rates. Inside the 54.5%, participants had different opinions on how this could change. One participant believed that a lot of foods are “demonised” that shouldn’t be, stating white bread as an example. Another said the ideal way to go was “more training in schools and workplace schemes”, one participant believed that “the key is being less prescriptive” and that “things like the Eatwell Guide very much imply what you can and cannot eat. Which discourages people.”

Another participant said: “Show them how to do it instead of just displaying the positives and negatives. Even baby steps like moderation and portion control, things that taste good but are low calorie, or even low-calorie substitutes.

“A Big Mac and a Big Mac without sauce have a substantially different calorie count. Additionally, not everything needs to be ‘healthy’. You can have fatty foods if you’re in a calorie deficit and you’ll still lose weight if that’s your goal.”

54.5% also thought that gyms were not accessible enough for working-class people. The average price of a gym membership in 2025 is around £40 per month. However, being priced out may not be the main issue. People with a full-time job will likely be at home around five. Most gyms close around ten. The sad truth is that most working-class people either don’t have the time or energy after a day at work to attend a gym. Even if they go late, they have work the next morning as well, which is a whole other issue on its own.

Another issue that working-class people who want to get healthy face is the stigma around body size. 81.8% of participants in the survey said that this stigma is a massive factor in discouraging people from exercising. A lot of people don’t want to try out of fear of judgement. According to a PureGym report, 50% of non gym-goers are very intimidated by the idea of going to the gym, with one in five saying they found it “very scary”.

“Gymtimidation” stems from a lot of places, but the most prevalent across both genders is that people were scared to look stupid. 40% of people are afraid to go to the gym because they are afraid of showing people they don't know what they’re doing. 48% of people are afraid to ask for help from another gym-goer, and 44% are afraid to ask for help from a member of staff. This only highlights the lack of education around handling one’s own health. Learning about the gym can feel incredibly daunting. Whether it’s about dieting, how to use the machines or just what exercises target which muscle groups. 

With prices on healthy foods rising, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for working-class people to maintain good health. A report published this year by the Food Foundation stated that prices for healthy food have increased at twice the rate that less healthy alternatives have. Over a third (36%) of advertising for food and soft drinks is spent on confectionery compared to just 2% being spent on advertising fruit and veg. 

Glasgow is also Scotland’s takeaway capital and second overall in the UK with 10.8 takeaways per 10,000 people. From 2019-2023 the number of fast food locations in Glasgow jumped by 15%, with 6,000 new locations opening by the end of 2022. With the number of people that work in the city, this is likely a contributor to the rising rates of obesity in the working class. Obesity Action Scotland found that in the most deprived quintile, over 38% of adults suffer from obesity, meanwhile, in the least deprived quintile, it’s half that, at 19%. 

Tom Steiner, formerly of Obesity Action Scotland, said: “If you asked that question to your everyday member of the public, the leading cause is people not controlling how much they eat compared to how much they exercise. The real issue lies in the environment that we now live in. If you go back 50 years to the 1970s, being obese or overweight was actually very rare, not common in the population at all.”

The environment around us does have an effect on how we go about life. Most notable perhaps is conditions like seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a kind of depression that occurs seasonally. Tom said: “In those past 50 years, human biology or willpower won’t have changed in such a small time frame, what has changed dramatically - what the evidence points to is the structure and environment. The availability and the convenience of what is called junk food, or ultra-processed food. That food tends to be most affordable and most heavily marketed and generally just the most easily-available option.”

Another factor in the slow uptick in obesity rates is technology, Tom said: “Technology has allowed people to not be physical anymore. You do a lot of desk work these days, we lack time. People work more now than they ever have and that leaves a lack of time to properly prepare healthy food, so people tend to opt for the most convenient option which at this point is unhealthy food that contributes to weight gain.”

Tom spoke a lot about the cultural side of it as well. He said: “When I say the environment I mainly mean the food environment. Marketing and advertising is a huge part of it as well. There’s a huge skew towards less healthy products. When you think about it, what you see on television, on billboards, it just kind of normalises and internalises these foods that are slowly killing the population. It’s scary once you understand just how often you see this. Most people will say: ‘it doesn’t really matter about advertising, I don’t feel affected by it.’, but you look at the flipside, why would companies spend millions of pounds on it?”

Tom spoke more on it, saying: “The Scottish government does have the devolved powers to act on things like outdoor advertising, which is the things on billboards and buses, just any kind of public transport space that they could ban from advertising unhealthy foods or brands associated with unhealthy foods.” Transport for London (TFL) heavily regulates advertising around food and drink, so why can’t we? On top of this, public transport is mostly used by working class adults or students that can’t afford cars, which again adds to the point that working class people are being targeted by this kind of promotion.

In terms of preventative measures, Tom had plenty, he said: “This is a population-level structural issue. We really try not to individualise it because that hasn’t worked at all. If you went up to your average person and said, ‘how would you solve the issue of people being obese or overweight?’, they might say that people need better education or cooking classes in schools. That’s all that we’ve done up until this point. Eat your five-a-day, cook from scratch, but it’s the environment around us which is so powerful and it effectively stops people from acting on the knowledge that they have.”

“What we advocate for is a change to the environment, and specifically areas like the promotion of products. That’s slightly different to advertising, it’s when you go into a shop or an online shop, and generally speaking, if you go into your local Tesco it’s going to be sweets and chocolates and cakes that you’re hit with as soon as you go in the door. They’re the ones that are most heavily in your eyesight or on deals like buy one get one free. They’re often at the checkout but hopefully that’s going to change soon.”

The Scottish Health Survey reported that, in 2023, 14% of adults faced food insecurity. While this does not seem like a large number, it’s at the highest level it’s ever been since it started being tracked in 2017, and it is a 5% increase in just two years' time.

All of these factors are a massive contributor to the most frequent cause of death in Scotland: Heart disease. Poor health from being priced out of good food and places of exercise. From 2022 to 2023 there were an estimated 7,130 deaths that had coronary heart disease (CHD) as their leading cause. 19 people every single day will lose their lives due to a mostly preventable problem. Working class people are being priced out of good, healthy food and are only getting worse off for it and something needs to be done about that.