While global hunger is on the decline for the third consecutive year in 2025, declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, a new report brings to light the need for food affordability. The report, which is authored by the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization, Unicef, the UN World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said “the proportion of people who cannot afford a healthy diet remains ‘extremely high.'”
The calculated cost of a healthy diet based on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report is 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per day.
“The extreme poverty line is $3PPP per person,” Maximo Torero, chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the report’s authors said. “So it’s significantly higher.”
Torero said that governments have subsidized starchy staples instead of meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables.
“That means calories, but not a diversity of diet,” he said.
Torero said this contributes to the high rates of obesity and other diseases including, cancer and diabetes. Because of this, the World Health Organization (WHO) determined that adult obesity rose from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024.
“It’s extremely urgent,” Torero said. “Obesity [among adults] is growing at a very steep level, so we need to now work intensively on trying to minimize those risks and those hidden costs that that substantial increase in obesity will bring.”
Torero and the authors of the report are is calling for government investment in infrastructure, more efficient supply chains and new policies to promote the consumption of fruit and vegetables to reduce the impact of these health issues linked to poor diets.
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