Healthy diets remain beyond reach for billions
Published on 15 October 2026 at 00:58 GMT
By Editorial Team SDG3
Food can be present in a market and still be inaccessible to the people living around it. An estimated 2.7 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2025, according to the World Bank’s updated monitoring series. The distinction concerns more than the quantity of food available: a household may be able to buy sufficient calories while lacking the money for a varied combination of foods that meets dietary guidelines.
The 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), places this affordability gap alongside a central estimate of 645 million people facing hunger in 2025, within an estimated range of 608 million to 696 million. The measures describe different problems and cannot be added together. Healthy-diet unaffordability concerns economic access to dietary quality; hunger monitoring concerns insufficient dietary energy.
A costly basket beyond staple calories
The World Bank distinguishes an energy-sufficient diet, built from the cheapest available starchy staple, from diets meeting nutrient requirements or food-based dietary guidelines. The latter incorporates fruit, vegetables, animal-source foods, legumes, nuts and seeds, alongside staples and oils. It measures an economical basket, rather than premium products, imported delicacies or a particular branded lifestyle.
Using 2021 food-group prices, the 2026 report finds that animal-source foods, fruit and vegetables account for nearly 70 per cent of the healthy basket's cost. Starchy staples contribute about one sixth of its cost while supplying half its calories. This imbalance helps explain how spending can cover dietary energy without covering dietary diversity. A lower price per calorie does not establish equivalent nutritional value.
Protein also requires a more precise discussion than a single meat price. The basket includes legumes, nuts and seeds as well as animal-source foods. Nor does minimal processing automatically establish either affordability or nutritional adequacy. The question is the cost of the whole dietary pattern, rather than whether every individual fresh product is expensive or every packaged product is nutritionally poor.
Improvement conceals regional pressure
The global picture does not support a simple claim that healthy eating is becoming unaffordable everywhere. The World Bank reports approximately 109 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025 than in 2024, using its updated series. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, the estimated number increased from 941 million in 2024 to more than 954 million in 2025. The global decline therefore coincided with a regional increase in the number affected.
The estimates also change as measurement improves. The bank's Food Prices for Nutrition database, updated in July 2026, uses revised international poverty lines and distinguishes population-weighted from simple averages. Its metadata identifies six countries where unresolved purchasing-power-parity assumptions prevent publication of some indicators. Comparing headline totals from successive editions without checking the underlying series can therefore mistake a statistical revision for a change in household circumstances.
Purchasing-power-parity dollars allow comparisons across economies; they are not a universal cash price payable at a supermarket checkout. National estimates also cannot describe every neighbourhood, season or family's particular needs. A global figure establishes the scale of exclusion, while leaving substantial questions about its local distribution.
The price of reaching the shelf
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) summary of the 2026 report identifies post-farmgate activities as accounting for 70 to 75 per cent of consumer food expenditure globally. Processing, logistics and wholesale are among these activities. This figure describes costs beyond farming, not a measured supermarket profit margin. It highlights why expanding harvests alone does not settle the retail affordability question.
Perishability adds another constraint. The report describes cold-chain gaps, transport costs and post-harvest handling problems across different food groups. Milk and fish, for example, face refrigeration and handling requirements that differ from those of dry staples. Distribution capacity influences whether a nutritious product can reach a customer at an accessible price, even when production exists elsewhere.
Markets also differ geographically. UNICEF highlights animal-source food costs and cold-chain deficits in Africa, vegetable and transport costs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and fruit handling in Asia. These are distinct bottlenecks. An intervention aimed at one product or one stage of a supply chain cannot be assumed to have the same effect in every region.
Wages and public policy shape the menu
Food affordability depends on the money remaining after other expenses. In a 2025 policy commentary in Food Policy, William A. Masters of Tufts University distinguishes high food prices from low incomes and from the displacement of inexpensive healthy options by other foods. He identifies housing costs, cooking costs, time, convenience and marketing among the factors shaping access and actual consumption.
This framework connects wages and social protection to diets without reducing the issue to individual shopping decisions. A pay rise and a retail price reduction affect different sides of the household budget. A cheaper nutritious basket can still exceed available resources; additional income cannot buy foods absent from accessible markets. The relevant comparison is between dietary cost and usable purchasing power.
Agricultural policy influences that cost too. UNICEF reports that about 70 per cent of global support to agricultural producers is tied to specific commodities, predominantly grains, sugar, dairy, beef and oil crops. Its summary attributes to the 2026 report proposals to redirect research investment towards fruit, vegetables and legumes and to repurpose subsidies. These are policy positions advanced by the report, with consequences for producers as well as consumers.
The report also advocates targeted cash transfers, food assistance and nutrition-sensitive social protection. Its analysis recognises that cost-reducing reforms are redistributive and involve livelihoods and environmental trade-offs. Questions about who receives support, which foods it purchases and whether markets can supply them remain part of implementation, rather than being resolved by announcing a programme.
The affordability gap is directly relevant to SDG 3 and SDG 2, which covers access to nutritious food as well as ending hunger. Full shelves establish that products are available for sale. They do not establish that household resources can purchase a healthy diet. The affordability estimates provide a measure of economic access to nutritious food alongside monitoring of dietary energy.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 supports the hunger estimates, food-group cost analysis, supply-chain constraints and social-protection discussion.
World Bank, Food Prices for Nutrition DataHub supports the diet definitions, affordability measures and updated global and regional trends.
World Bank, Food Prices for Nutrition data catalogue documents the 2026 methodological update and gaps in country coverage.
UNICEF, its 2026 report summary supports the distribution-cost figures, regional bottlenecks and attributed agricultural-policy proposals.
William A. Masters, Food Policy (2025), examines how prices, incomes, non-food costs and consumer constraints influence diet affordability.
