About the report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is an annual flagship report jointly prepared by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to inform on progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and to provide in-depth analysis on key challenges for achieving this goal in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The report targets a wide audience, including policy-makers, international organizations, academic institutions and the general public. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report reeased by five United Nations specialized agencies. The report focusses on the theme "Understanding and addressing the high cost of a healthy diet". A healthy diet is: adequate – supplying enough essential nutrients to meet requirements and prevent deficiencies; balanced – in energy and its three main sources (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) to support healthy weight and growth; diverse – comprising a variety of foods within and across distinct food groups; and moderate – with limited consumption of dietary components detrimental to health if consumed in excess. While healthy diets are essential for population health, child development, and sustainable livelihoods, unhealthy dietary patterns persist globally. These patterns contribute massively to the global disease burden, imposing immense health, economic and social costs. Access to a healthy diet is influenced by household incomes, consumer preferences, food environments and, critically, the cost of foods. Amid recent high food price inflation, the cost barrier has intensified. The cost of a healthy diet (CoHD), introduced as a benchmark indicator in 2020, allows for consistent and comparable monitoring of the minimum daily cost of purchasing locally available foods that constitute a healthy diet. The 2026 edition of this report investigates the global patterns of the CoHD, its structural drivers, and the targeted policies and investments required to reduce these costs. Key messages New global estimates of hunger confirm sustained, gradual improvement. An estimated 7.8 percent of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022. Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have shown steady progress in recent years, and the prolonged upward trend in hunger in Africa has come to a halt. Between 608 and 696 million people in the world, corresponding to 7.4 and 8.5 percent of the global population, respectively, faced hunger in 2025. Considering the point estimate of 645 million in 2025, this indicates a decrease of about 14 million people compared to 2024 and 43 million compared to 2022. While the number is projected to continue to decrease, between 510 and 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030, of whom 56 percent will be in Africa. For the first time, Africa hosts the largest number of people facing hunger. In 2025, hunger affected 309 million people in Africa, 292 million in Asia and 32 million in Latin America and the Caribbean – 20.0, 6.0 and 4.8 percent of the population, respectively. In 2025, an estimated 2.1 billion people – 25.8 percent of the global population – were moderately or severely food insecure, down from 28.7 percent in 2020. Nearly 86 million fewer people experienced food insecurity in 2025 compared to 2024, and 135 million fewer compared to 2020. Steady progress has been seen in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean since 2020, and there was improvement in Africa in 2025 for the first time since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched in 2015. The global prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity was consistently higher in rural areas than in peri-urban areas, and lowest in urban areas; it was higher among women than among men, although the difference was smaller in 2025 compared to 2024. Dietary diversity – one of the four core principles of healthy diets – remains inadequate globally for both children and women. Only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months, and 62.7 percent of women aged 15 to 49 years, consume a minimally diverse diet. Global progress on maternal and child nutrition is far too slow – and in several areas it is reversing – leaving the world off track for all 2030 targets. Stunting, wasting and overweight among children under five years of age, low birthweight, and exclusive breastfeeding are improving only marginally and not at the pace required, while anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years is worsening. New estimates of the prevalence of obesity in adults in the world show a steady increase from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024, contrary to the target of halting the rise in obesity by 2025. Progress towards the 2030 global nutrition targets is highly uneven across regions. The prevalence of child stunting is decreasing markedly in Africa and is on track to reach the 2030 target in Asia, while exclusive breastfeeding is improving in all regions for which data are available. On the other hand, nearly all regions are seeing widening gaps between the projected and target prevalence for anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years, and child overweight is rising sharply in Oceania. Without stronger multisectoral policies and sustained investment, there is a risk of missing key nutrition targets in every region. Healthy diets are essential to achieving SDG 2, but remain economically out of reach for large segments of the global population. In the context of persistent cost-of-living pressures, reducing the cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to enhance diet quality, and thus improve nutrition, health and development outcomes. The CoHD rose globally to 4.28 PPP dollars in 2025 from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017, with the highest cost in Latin America and the Caribbean (4.91 PPP dollars). The global number of people unable to afford a healthy diet decreased from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the world population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025. The improvement in affordability suggests that, on average, incomes available for food increased more relative to food prices. However, unaffordability of a healthy diet is increasing in Africa, where a healthy diet was out of reach for 66.6 percent of the population in 2025, more than double the levels estimated for Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. The CoHD indicator uses price data from the International Comparison Program, a worldwide statistical initiative, which imposes limitations in terms of item coverage and update frequency. As a complement to global monitoring, United Nations agencies are supporting national governments in producing their own CoHD estimates using national retail food price data. Animal source foods, fruits and vegetables account for a large share of the total cost, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. The relative cost of food groups varies across regions. Animal source foods are the highest-cost food group in Africa, while vegetables account for the largest share of diet costs in Latin America and the Caribbean. Differences in both food basket composition and overall food prices explain cross-country variation in diet costs. Flexibility in selecting locally available, low-cost foods substantially reduces the CoHD, particularly in regions with greater product diversity. At the same time, the CoHD is positively associated with overall food prices (relative to household expenditures). However, at any given level of relative food prices, substantial variation in the CoHD between countries remains. This underscores the distinct feature of the CoHD indicator, which establishes a cost floor for a healthy diet by focusing on the least-cost available items rather than on general food prices. Within countries, the CoHD varies considerably across locations and seasons. National annual averages can mask important temporal and geographical variation, underscoring the need for frequent, granular price data to support timely and well-targeted policies. Structural characteristics of agrifood systems are associated with the CoHD. Higher agricultural productivity and crop yields, sustained public investment in research and development, efficient logistics and transport (including better road quality), mobile connectivity, effective trade integration, and lower electricity and labour costs are all associated with a lower CoHD, pointing to key entry points. Reducing the CoHD requires context-specific interventions rather than uniform approaches. Policy options fall along two complementary axes: expanding the supply of nutritious foods through domestic production and trade, and lowering structural per unit costs across the agrifood value chain. The most effective strategies combine investments along both axes, including research and development, irrigation, infrastructure, cold chains and food loss reduction, alongside structural and policy reforms in subsidy design, trade facilitation and regulatory frameworks. Long-term productivity gains are greatest when agricultural research and development is oriented towards fruits, vegetables and legumes. Translating these gains into lower diet costs requires enabling systems, including seed delivery, water management, land tenure, finance and extension, that support technology adoption. Post-farmgate activities account for 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay, with up to 40 percent of value chain costs accumulating in midstream processing, logistics and wholesale. Improving efficiency at these stages is essential for lowering the prices of perishable foods that compose healthy diets. Integrated interventions across the value chain yield significantly larger cost reductions than do isolated measures. Targeted technological and structural upgrades in perishable foods, especially fruits and vegetables, emerge as key levers for narrowing the affordability gap – for example, addressing cold chain deficits and high animal source food costs in Africa, improving transport and reducing vegetable costs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and strengthening post-harvest handling of fruits in Asia. Public spending is most effective when directed towards the higher-cost food groups. Broad fiscal support to already low-cost staples generates limited improvements in overall dietary affordability. Implementing cost-reducing reforms presents governance challenges. Efforts must ensure that cost reductions do not come at the expense of environmental sustainability, public health or decent rural livelihoods. Demand-side interventions should be carefully sequenced with supply expansion to avoid unintended price increases. Because reforms are redistributive, they require transition support and inclusive public–private collaboration to protect vulnerable consumers and enable smallholders, women and youth to benefit. Source : FAO Related resources To view the complete report, click here.