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Recent decades have witnessed the rise of cheap, calorie-loaded diets in countries as diverse as the US, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. In the UK, the price of an ice-cream halved between 1980 and 2012 yet the price of fresh vegetables tripled, according to a recent study from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Meanwhile, the relative prices for fruit and vegetables in the middle-income countries of Brazil, China, Korea and Mexico increased by as much as 91% between 1990 and 2012, while the price tag of processed foods fell by up to 20%, according to the ODI study.