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# Enough food to survive costs a family of four R1,245 a month, but eating properly costs R3,846
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-food-security-index-2026-balanced-diet-cost/
- Published: 2026-10-16T03:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-16T03:14:59.000Z
- Description: Food prices have almost stopped rising, but the Shoprite Group's third Food Security Index finds a balanced diet can still take up to 57% of the income of a family earning R5,000 to R10,000 a month.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Economy, Business Bagel News

Behind the figures on how families are coping in the Shoprite Group's new Food Security Index, its authors write, is a person standing in an aisle with a budget in their head: chicken feet and necks instead of frozen chicken pieces, a different brand, a smaller pack than usual. The third edition of the index, compiled by a team that includes Stellenbosch University economists, finds that for a lot of households the sums no longer work.

To show how far apart surviving and eating well have drifted, the report uses two baskets priced by the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy. The first holds enough calories to survive and little else, and in February it cost R1,245\. The second is a nutritionally balanced diet of 27 items, built to feed a low-income family of four for a month, and it cost R3,846, mostly because of the meat, fish, eggs, fruit and vegetables in it.

For a family earning R5,000 to R10,000 a month, the balanced basket alone would take up to 57% of income, while the survival basket takes up to 18%. That is the distance between not going hungry and eating properly, and roughly half of the poorest fifth of households already say there is not enough variety of food at home.

## Hunger at its highest since 2010

The index itself fell in 2025, and now sits only a couple of points above what it counts as average. Household hunger reached 12% in 2025, a level not seen since 2010\. It is worse in rural homes headed by women, where the share living below the food poverty line rose to 41.7%, from 38.4% two years earlier.

## The squeeze has moved off the shelf

Food prices, meanwhile, have nearly stopped climbing. Food inflation was 5.7% in July 2025 and had dropped to just 1% by June this year. The report draws the line itself: food inflation measures how fast prices are changing, not whether a household can afford to eat.

What is eating the budget now sits outside the trolley. By March, housing and utilities made up 39% of headline inflation, more than double the share that came from food. An 8.76% increase in electricity tariffs, plus dearer fuel, is expected to cost lower-income households an extra R160 a month for power and R115 a month to get around.

The Shoprite Group's Sanjeev Raghubir said at the launch that support "must reach beyond the food basket". The report sets its own test: whether a household's income still covers food once electricity and transport are paid for. For many, it says, it does not.