The weekly economic burden of a Gluten-Free Diet

Abstract

A COST COMPARISON BETWEEN GLUTEN e FREE AND CONVENTIONAL FOODSStamatina Panagiotou, Meropi Kontogianni. Department of Nutrition & Dietetics, Harokopio University, Athens, Greece Introduction: Lifelong adherence to a gluten-free diet consists the only available treatment for celiac disease. Such a diet displays various difficulties in its implementation, including its high cost. Aim: To compare the cost of gluten-free products (GFP) from supermarkets and pharmacies to the cost of their conventional counterparts. Materials and methods: The prices of all the products labelled as "glutenfree" available at four large supermarkets in Athens, as well as the prices of all their standard counterparts were recorded. Also, the prices of all the GFP available in pharmacies were recorded, as referred in the official list of the National Health Service Organization. For every product the price per 100g was calculated. All products were classified into 38 categories. For each category the median of the prices per 100g was calculated, both for conventional and for GFP available at supermarkets, as well as for the pharmacy GFP. Medians were compared conducting Mann-Whitney U test with the statistical analysis package SPSS. Results: All GFP available at supermarkets, except for three, were more expensive compared to their conventional counterparts by 4%-804%. Regarding the pharmacy GFP, all were more expensive compared to their standard counterparts by 36-494%. When comparing the prices of GFP available at supermarkets to the prices of GFP available at pharmacies, all products, excluding three, were more expensive at the pharmacy by 3-92%. Conclusions: The present study demonstrates the higher cost of the GFP, compared to their conventional counterparts, which results in increased diet cost for patients with celiac disease. THE WEEKLY ECONOMIC BURDEN OF A GLUTEN-FREE DIETStamatina Panagiotou, Meropi Kontogianni. Department of Nutrition & Dietetics, Harokopio University, Athens, Greece Introduction: The cost of the Gluten-Free Diet (GFD) is often mentioned in the literature as a cause of patients' poor compliance to the therapy.Aim: To calculate the extra amount of money that a child, an adolescent, and an adult spends per week in order to follow a GFD, compared to the amount of money spent to follow a regular diet. Materials and methods: Three weekly dietary menus, based on the principles of a healthy diet, were designed for children (2200 calories), adolescents (3400 calories) and adults (2500 calories). For each age group the upper levels of energy intake were selected, to cover the majority of the patients. For all three weekly menus the weekly cost of the gluten-free products, both from supermarkets and from pharmacies, as well as the cost of their conventional counterparts were calculated. The extra cost of the GFD per week was equal to the difference of the overall weekly cost of gluten-free products from the overall weekly cost of their conventional counterparts and was calculated in V/week. Results: The weekly financial b...