Poverty makes you sick. There is a direct link between a low household income and an unhealthy diet. It is not necessarily more expensive to eat healthily. It is true that there are many people who do not value healthy eating. But there is also a growing group who lack the necessary skills and resources to achieve this goal. On the one hand, there is a lack of time - both for shopping and for preparing food. On the other hand, there is a lack of knowledge because this was not imparted by parents or at school. In addition, the necessary information for a healthy diet is often not available or is covered up by advertising. We want to develop a prototype that provides a technical solution based on the database of CodeCheck, which enables low-threshold a healthier diet at the same expenditure.

Need and target group

Our target group are people with low income. We are particularly interested in people who spend 30% or more of their household income on food - this expenditure averaged around 15% in Germany in 2021. Specifically, this can be single parents, students or pensioners. Not everyone in this target group has the need to eat healthier. But those who do have this need see different barriers to fulfilling it. Often, they lack the necessary knowledge about the relationship between nutrition and health because these relationships were not adequately taught during childhood and adolescence. Therefore, the decision in the supermarket is often made on the basis of brand awareness and advertising messages. In addition, there is no willingness in the target group to invest significantly more time in shopping or preparation in order to eat healthier. We have to take these aspects into account when developing our prototype. We want to develop a technical solution that enables users to shop healthier overall in the same amount of time without additional prior knowledge and with the same budget - and thus to live healthier and happier.

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