Pricele #103: A day's healthy diet in Hungary 🇭🇺
The puzzle for 11 October 2026 asked what a day's healthy diet costs in Hungary. Here is the answer and the context behind it.
The answer
A day's healthy diet · Hungary
$2.92
1,031.79 HUF
About 20 minutes of the average local wage buys a day's healthy diet.
More expensive than 65% of the 49 countries in the game.
Source: World Bank Food Prices for Nutrition, 2025 (converted at the World Bank official exchange rate).
About healthy diet
This is not a shopping basket anyone actually buys. It is the cheapest combination of foods on sale locally that would meet dietary guidelines, which makes it a floor rather than an average, and the number economists use to count how many people cannot reach it. Over two and a half billion people live in countries where a day of it costs more than they have to spend on food.
Where Hungary sits
Of the 49 countries priced for healthy diet, Hungary ranks #18 from the top at $2.92, 1.1× the median of $2.57.
Hungary charges 27% VAT, the highest standard rate in the world, and that single fact explains more about Hungarian prices than anything else in this note. Food falls to 18% for milk, dairy and cereal products and to 5% for a few others, but the gap between the headline rate and what a shopper actually pays is smaller here than almost anywhere. Pulling the other way, household energy is heavily regulated: the long-running utility price cap holds electricity and gas well below what the market would charge, so those rows look out of step with the rest of the country's prices.
| Nearby on the healthy diet table | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $2.86 | 2.86 USD | 7 min |
| Spain | $2.88 | 2.55 EUR | 14 min |
| Hungary | $2.92 | 1,031.79 HUF | 20 min |
| Netherlands | $3.01 | 2.66 EUR | 9 min |
| Australia | $3.07 | 4.76 AUD | 7 min |
What else costs what in Hungary
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $4.99 | 1,660 HUF | 35 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $2.09 | 659 HUF | 15 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $12.30 | 3,895 HUF | 86 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $9.60 | 3,042.4 HUF | 67 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $6.29 | 2,300 HUF | 44 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $0.58 | 210.54 HUF | 4 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $10.11 | 3,696 HUF | 71 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $1.71 | — | 12 min |
Go deeper
See the full table for healthy diet in every country or everything priced in Hungary.