Obesity and hunger within the same communities
Published on 21 October 2026 at 06:52 GMT
By Editorial Team SDG2
Hunger and obesity can coexist across countries, neighbourhoods and families. Food access involves both dietary energy and nutritional quality: cheap, filling products can be available where a varied, nutritious diet remains unaffordable. As food systems change, undernutrition can persist alongside rising obesity and diet-related disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) calls this the double burden of malnutrition. Its definition encompasses undernutrition alongside overweight, obesity or diet-related non-communicable diseases. These conditions are different, but their presence in the same population is not contradictory: food quantity, nutritional quality and reliable access measure different things.
Food insecurity beyond empty plates
Undernutrition includes wasting, meaning low weight for height, and stunting, meaning low height for age. Malnutrition also includes deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, as well as overweight and obesity. The WHO identifies unhealthy diets and poor nutrition among the risk factors for conditions including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Body size alone cannot describe all these nutritional problems.
A household can contain an adult living with obesity and a child with stunted growth. Stunting reflects chronic or recurrent undernutrition, often alongside illness and other adverse conditions. Excess weight alone does not establish that vitamin and mineral intake is sufficient. Undernutrition early in life can also precede overweight later.
The 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, estimates that approximately 645 million people faced hunger in 2025, within a range of 608 million to 696 million. About 2.1 billion experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. The broader measure includes uncertainty about obtaining adequate food and reductions in food quality or quantity; it does not mean that everyone counted continuously lacked calories.
Those categories are not interchangeable with obesity figures, and their totals cannot establish how many individuals experience both. Identifying overlap within a particular neighbourhood or family requires evidence at that level. A national prevalence of undernutrition alongside obesity demonstrates coexistence across a population, not the nutritional history of each resident.
The price of a nutritious diet
The same 2026 report estimates that 2.69 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2025. Its affordability analysis concerns access to a reference basket of diverse foods, rather than simply enough dietary energy. A household buying sufficient staple calories can still fall outside that measure of affordability.
This helps explain why supermarket shelves full of food do not necessarily indicate food security. The relevant question is what a household can regularly obtain within its resources. Availability at the national level, availability in a nearby shop and affordability for a particular family are separate conditions.
In its 2025 Feeding Profit report, UNICEF describes inexpensive ultra-processed foods expanding through retail markets. It reports that these products tend to be cheaper than fresh or minimally processed nutritious foods, partly because subsidies reduce the cost of ingredients such as maize, soya and wheat. This is a reported pattern, not a universal price rule for every product or country.
Marketing and changing daily life
UNICEF also documents commercial exposure that differs by neighbourhood. Its research in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico found retailers more likely to display sweet snacks and sugary cereals prominently at entrances and within children's reach in poorer communities. Digital advertising extends the food environment beyond shops into children's online lives.
The report describes parents facing work stress and time pressure turning to convenient fast food where outlets are plentiful. Affordability therefore interacts with convenience and marketing. The presence of a fresh-food outlet does not, by itself, establish that families have the money and time to use it regularly.
In a WHO account of a 2019 research series, co-author Barry Popkin describes changes in eating and movement at work, at home, during travel and in leisure. He identifies disappearing fresh-food markets and expanding supermarket influence among changes in food systems. These developments vary across places; supermarket growth alone does not explain every case of obesity or undernutrition.
The series found that 14 countries with some of the lowest incomes in the world had newly developed a double burden between the 1990s and 2010s under its specified prevalence criteria. This historical comparison shows how obesity can emerge where wasting, stunting and thinness persist. It is not a current count of all affected countries.
What the evidence can establish
A controlled experiment provides evidence that food characteristics can affect consumption. In 2019, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported a trial involving 20 adults who spent two weeks on each of two diets, in random order. The ultra-processed category covers industrial formulations, rather than all food that has undergone processing. Participants could eat freely and consumed about 500 more calories a day during the ultra-processed diet. They gained an average of 0.9 kilograms during that period and lost a similar amount during the other diet.
The trial supports a causal effect of the tested diets under controlled conditions. Its small size and short duration do not establish the effect of every packaged food or explain whole communities. Nor does it measure food insecurity: participants received meals rather than buying them within household budgets.
The WHO research account links early undernutrition followed by excess weight to increased risks of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. These are risks, not inevitable outcomes for every person. Understanding the overlap involves both present food access and earlier nutritional experience.
The issue relates directly to SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), which includes ending all forms of malnutrition. Evidence of hunger, restricted dietary quality and excess weight describes different dimensions of that goal. Their coexistence means that counting calories alone cannot establish whether a community has secure access to nutritious food.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
WHO, Malnutrition. Defines the forms of malnutrition and explains associated disease risks.
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026. Provides estimates of hunger, food insecurity and healthy-diet affordability, with definitions and methods.
UNICEF, Feeding Profit, 2025 Child Nutrition Report. Documents prices, retail environments, marketing and pressures shaping children's diets.
WHO, More than one in three low- and middle-income countries face both extremes of malnutrition. Describes the 2019 research series, historical transitions and health risks.
NIH, First randomized, controlled study finds ultra-processed diet leads to weight gain. Reports the design and findings of the 2019 controlled feeding trial.
