One in three people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet, according to an annual report by five United Nations agencies, which calls for urgent steps to bring food prices within people’s reach.
The report says 2.69 billion people worldwide cannot afford a varied diet capable of meeting their energy and nutrition needs, and that “a great deal” of work is needed to meet the global goal of a hunger-free world by 2030.
The number of hungry people fell for a third consecutive year in 2025. The rate was 8.1 percent in 2024, falling to 7.8 percent in 2025. There are also signs that the long-running rise in the number of hungry people in Africa is levelling off.
Máximo Torero, one of the report’s authors and chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the share of people unable to afford a healthy diet remains “extremely high.”
The report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026,” gives a costing for a healthy diet, putting the daily cost at 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars — meaning the cost of a healthy diet in any country equals the amount of money that would buy the same quantity of goods as $4.28 in the United States.
“The extreme poverty line is 3 PPP dollars per person per day, so this cost of a healthy diet is far above the poverty line,” Torero said. He added that governments generally subsidise cereals and starchy staples more than meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables.
That means people get only calories, with no variety in their diet, Torero said, noting its role in the spread of obesity and of diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), another UN agency involved in the report, show the same picture: adult obesity stood at 12.1 percent in 2012, rising to 16.2 percent in 2024.
“This is extremely urgent. Obesity among adults is rising very fast,” Torero said. “We need to work intensively now to reduce the risks and hidden costs that will grow because of rising obesity.”
Torero called for increased investment in infrastructure, research and development. The report sets out a framework saying the prices of meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables can be brought down by making supply systems more efficient. In Torero’s view, adopting new policies to increase fruit and vegetable consumption could help considerably, reducing the economic impact of the health risks caused by poor nutrition.
According to 2025 figures, 66.6 percent of people in Africa cannot afford a healthy diet — more than double the rate in Asia or in Latin America and the Caribbean.
For the first time, Africa is now home to the largest number of hungry people in the world. The report shows about 309 million hungry people on the continent, against 292 million in Asia, putting Africa ahead of Asia.
Torero said the number of hungry people in Africa has risen so much mainly because of high population growth, but that the proportion has begun to fall “for the first time in many years.”
“I think this is extremely important, because in these 2025 figures we have seen the rate of hunger fall at a time when foreign development assistance to the region has fallen significantly,” the economist said.
He said the restrictions on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz caused by the Middle East conflict are feared to have a negative effect on next year’s figures.
The report was produced jointly by the FAO, the WHO, UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report