Healthy diets, global indicators on their costs reveal that billions of people in the world cannot afford them

ROME – Today, theFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has made available country-by-country indicators on healthy diets that show their cost – also by food group – and the amount of people who cannot afford them. The data serves as a reminder that while the world has made progress in providing enough calories to feed the global population, there remains a long way to go to sustainably feed all people, everywhere. Recently, the FAO conducted an in-depth analysis of how many people can actually afford a healthy diet, offering a variety of nutrient-dense foods, in line with dietary guidelines. The result was sobering: billions of people around the world cannot afford a healthy diet.

In Latin America and the Caribbean the highest costs. Now the indicators developed by the FAO with critical input from researchers at the Tufts University and of World Bank show, for example, that Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest cost of a healthy diet compared to other regions, at $3.89 per person per day in 2020, followed by Asia ($3.72), Africa ($3.72), $3.46), North America and Europe ($3.19), and Oceania ($3.07). Between 2019 and 2020, Asia witnessed the highest increase in the cost of a healthy diet (4.0%), followed by Oceania (3.6%), Latin America and the Caribbean (3.4%), North America and Europe (3.2%) and Africa (2.5%). Nearly 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, an increase of 112 million more people than in 2019, reflecting the higher costs of eating a healthy diet in 2020. This was driven primarily by Asia, where 78 million more people were unable to afford this diet, followed by Africa (25 million more people) and, to a lesser extent, Latin America and the Caribbean , from North America and Europe (8 and 1 million more people, respectively).

The numbers that concern Africans. In 12 countries, all in Africa, more than 90% of the population cannot afford a healthy diet on a regular basis. The same is true for more than half of the population in 53 countries for which data are available. In 26 countries this figure is less than 1%. The set of indicators has now been made available for all to view and download on FAO’s easy-to-use data hub. FAOSTAT is the world’s largest data platform for food and agriculture with approximately 20,000 indicators covering more than 245 countries and territories. The development, monitoring and reporting of global, regional and national indicators on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD) are now institutionalized and will be regularly updated by FAO. This provides a powerful new benchmark for tracking global progress toward making healthy diets accessible to all.

The integrated set of data. These indicators are based on an integrated set of data, calculated on the basis of variables including retail prices of locally available foods and food-based dietary guidelines, national household income distribution models, and the formulas needed to establish purchasing power parities. “End hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms (including undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity) means more than ensuring enough food to survive: what people eat must also be nutrient,” said David Laborde, Director of FAO’s Agri-Food Economics Division. However, a key barrier is the high cost of nutritious foods and the low accessibility of healthy diets for large numbers of people around the world.”

The cost of accessibility. “Monitoring the cost and affordability of healthy diets is a step towards recognizing the need to feed and not just feed the world,” said FAO Director of Food and Nutrition, Lynnette Neufeld. “This new methodology also provides us with the starting point to generate locally relevant evidence to guide policies and programs to make healthy diets accessible to all people, at all times.” This FAO CoAHD initiative is part of a larger series of activities that will help achieve one of FAO’s four goals within its Strategic Framework 2022-31 – Better Nutrition. “Systematically measuring and monitoring the cost and affordability of healthy diets and making progress towards ensuring the affordability of healthy diets is of the utmost importance and urgently needed. FAO has stepped forward and taken on this task,” he said. saidJosé Rosero Moncayo, Director of the Statistics Division of FAO.

FAO calculates eight indicators on cost and accessibility. A healthy diet provides not only adequate calories, but also the right types of nutrient-dense foods from a variety of food groups, as recommended by food-based dietary guidelines. The reference diet is estimated based on a ‘representative’ adult consuming 2 330 kilocalories per day – an approach commonly used for food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG). Locally available foods at the lowest cost, at recommended serving sizes from six food groups (staple foods, vegetables, fruits, foods of animal origin, legumes, nuts and seeds, oils and fats) constitute the healthy reference diet.

The threshold of accessibility. Consumer prices of these foods are obtained from the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (PIC) and are updated using national consumer food price indices. For international comparisons, prices are converted to international dollars using purchase parity (PPP) exchange rates and national income distributions. The accessibility threshold is defined as 52% of the average household expenditure.

Future prospects. The availability of these indicators at the global, regional and national levels now lays the groundwork for greater accountability, using timely data on the retail prices of nutritious food products in all countries of the world. Future work will expedite price data updates. This initiative is part of FAO’s wider effort to produce evidence to advise countries on their food and nutrition policies. FAO encourages its Members and all stakeholders to expand the development and reporting of these indicators at the sub-national level, thus helping to pursue more tailored policies and programs to have greater impact on the ground. FAO and the Government of Pakistan are already working on this approach. The next report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world will be launched in July 2023.