Meat- and chocolate-heavy diets hit harder by food inflation as climate extremes bite

The modelling found that food prices rose by 4.5% over 2025 for the standard UK food basket, compared with just 2.7% for the balanced basket – 40% less inflation. The healthier basket experienced lower year-on-year inflation in every month of 2025.

For a household spending a typical amount on food – around £70 per week in 2021 – this would have translated into cumulative savings of around £520 by August 2026 and approximately £190 less expenditure in 2025 alone.

The difference was driven in large part by lower consumption of foods that have experienced particularly sharp price increases, including several whose production has been disrupted by extreme weather linked to climate change.

Chocolate was the single largest contributor, accounting for 32% of the downward pressure on inflation in the healthy basket over 2024 and 2025. Meat accounted for a further 22%, with beef and lamb alone contributing almost 15%

Chris Jaccarini, Senior Economist at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said: “From cocoa farms in West Africa to livestock grazing in British fields, climate extremes are increasingly pushing up food prices. People are already eating less meat [5] and our analysis suggests that eating a balanced diet, including less meat and chocolate, could offer some protection from climate-driven food inflation, though it’s not a silver bullet.

“While particularly vulnerable foods like beef and tropical commodities such as coffee and chocolate have been among the hardest hit so far, worsening droughts, floods and heatwaves are likely to affect an increasingly wide range of foods. Ultimately, bringing emissions down to net zero is essential to limiting further warming and protecting our food supply from increasingly extreme weather.”

Both beef and lamb experienced average annual inflation of around 10% over the two years, while chocolate prices rose by an average of 12.5% a year.

Chocolate prices have surged following extreme heat, drought and heavy rainfall affecting cocoa production in West Africa [3]. Meanwhile, beef, lamb and dairy prices have faced pressure from climate-related disruption to livestock production, with wet weather, drought and heat reducing pasture availability, increasing feed costs and contributing to falling herd and flock numbers [2].

Other foods that receive less weight in in the balanced basked, including confectionery, bakery products, butter and soft drinks, also contributed to lower modelled inflation. As did fish, which made up a larger proportion of the healthier diets, and has prices were falling further reduced inflation exposure.

However, healthier diets were not entirely insulated from rising prices. Coffee intake is unchanged across both diets, but coffee prices have risen sharply as extreme weather has damaged harvests in Brazil and Vietnam [4]. The healthier basket also gives greater weight to fruit, vegetables and cereals, many of which also experienced price rises. Even after these offsetting effects, the Eatwell-aligned basket experienced substantially lower inflation overall.

Anna Taylor, Executive Director at the Food Foundation, said: 
"This analysis shows a healthier diet can deliver a double dividend for families: greater protection from food price shocks today, and better health for the future. Both matter for household finances and for building a more economically resilient society.

"Yet the families hit hardest by rising food costs are often the least able to afford a healthy diet in the first place: our Broken Plate report shows poorest families with children would need to spend 85% of their disposable income to do so. Healthy, sustainable food must become the affordable and accessible option, and that requires action across the whole food system. 

"That is why we are calling on the Government to introduce a Good Food Bill- a long-term framework with binding targets and a clear plan to make healthy, sustainable diets affordable for everyone."

The analysis compares two food baskets using the same Office for National Statistics price data, but with different expenditure shares reflecting current diets and diets more closely aligned with Government health guidelines. It does not suggest that the entire inflation difference was caused by climate change but shows how dietary choices can influence exposure to price shocks, including those linked to extreme weather.

The findings suggest that diets more closely aligned with dietary recommendations could offer benefits beyond health alone. By reducing reliance on several foods particularly exposed to recent price pressures, healthier diets could help protect households against future food inflation.

The analysis does not mean that healthier diets are necessarily cheaper overall. Instead, it shows that households following more balanced diets would have been less exposed to some of the fastest-rising food prices in recent years.

With climate change increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather affecting food production in the UK and around the world, the findings highlight how the composition of household diets could become increasingly important in determining their exposure to rising food costs.