The relative cost of healthy and sustainable diets is key for their adoption in different countries. Using a newly developed modelling tool that generates different diet baskets, we compared the costs of diets following the EAT–Lancet healthy reference diet, the Mexican dietary guidelines and locals’ current food intake. On average, the cost of the EAT–Lancet healthy reference diet baskets was 21% lower than that of the Mexican dietary guidelines baskets, and 40% lower than that of the current intake baskets (29% lower if the comparison was isocaloric). Findings were similar over time (2011–2018) and by geographic region. The higher cost associated with the larger amount of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts in healthy and sustainable diets was surpassed by the savings associated with their lower amount of animal protein sources, sugar-sweetened beverages and discretionary foods. We conclude that transitioning to better diets in Mexico is possible without a higher expenditure on food.

健康和可持续饮食的相对成本是它们在不同国家采用的关键。我们使用新开发的生成不同饮食篮子的建模工具，比较了遵循 EAT- Lancet健康参考饮食、墨西哥饮食指南和当地人当前食物摄入量的饮食成本。平均而言，EAT 的成本 –柳叶刀健康参考饮食篮比墨西哥饮食指南篮低 21%，比当前摄入篮低 40%（如果比较是等热量的，则低 29%）。随着时间的推移（2011-2018 年）和按地理区域，调查结果相似。与健康和可持续饮食中大量水果、蔬菜、豆类和坚果相关的较高成本被它们较少量的动物蛋白源、含糖饮料和可自由支配的食品所节省的成本所抵消。我们的结论是，墨西哥有可能在不增加食品支出的情况下过渡到更好的饮食。