Thumbnail Image

Food and diet

Statistics on dietary data













Main findings:

More on this topic:

Last updated 08/02/2024, see Corrigendum


FAO. 2024. Food and diet – Statistics on dietary data. FAOSTAT Analytical Briefs, No. 82. Rome.



Also available in:
No results found.

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Thumbnail Image
    Booklet
    General interest book
    Food and diet
    Statistics on dietary data – October 2025 update
    2025
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    One of the main obstacles towards a healthy diet for all is the insufficiency of available data and statistics on food and nutrition to support effective evidence-based policies. Despite the increasing availability of data, policymakers are often not aware of their existence or their relevance, and consequently these data are not used properly or to their full potential. An added challenge is the scattered location of such data and statistics, and the lack of a centralized structure to house harmonized statistics on food and nutrition from different types of dietary data. As a result of this, teams from three divisions of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) joined forces to produce and publish harmonized food and nutrient statistics from different types of dietary data by creating an integrated food and diet domain available through FAOSTAT. The domain was launched in February 2024 and is the first centralized location for the sharing of statistics on different forms of dietary-related data. The domain provides energy, macro- and micro-nutrient statistics and is composed of four subdomains presenting availability based on FAO supply utilization accounts (SUA) data, for 178 countries from 2010 to 2023; apparent intake based on 59 household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES) conducted in 34 countries between 2010 and 2024; intake based on eight nationally representative individual quantitative dietary data surveys from five countries; and statistics related to the Minimum Dietary for Women (MDD-W) indicator from 25 surveys, conducted in 23 countries.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Article
    Journal article
    Cross-context equivalence and agreement of healthy diet metrics for national and global monitoring: a multicountry analysis of cross-sectional quantitative 24-hour dietary intake studies 2024
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    The impacts of diets on public health are well recognized, yet most countries do not have surveillance systems for monitoring diets at scale. This is constrained, in part, by the lack of universally accepted healthy diet metrics. Timely national dietary intake data are crucial to assess more immediate progress toward international initiatives’ indicators, identify within-country disparities, permit valid cross-country comparisons, and inform high-level decisions on nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive actions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    Technical book
    Urban food system assessments for nutrition and healthy diets
    Technical guidance note
    2022
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    An important part of FAO’s work involves the development and uptake of assessment tools that can help improve understanding of the characteristics, dynamics and constraints of food systems. Recent efforts have focused on supporting national and subnational governments and food system stakeholders in urban settings. Numerous tools, methodologies and guiding principles are available in the broad technical areas of food supply chains, cityregion food systems and value chains, to assess the contribution of food systems for the eradication of hunger. However, there is a dearth of resources that place primary focus on navigating food systems for outcomes related to nutrition – in particular, healthy diets. The technical guidance note addresses this gap, taking inspiration from existing resources on food security and nutrition to propose an integrated approach towards assessing food systems for healthy diets in the context of urban areas. The note begins by elaborating the need to operationalize conceptual frameworks on food systems in order to enable evidenceinformed policy and programme design, and support a food systems transformation agenda focused on nutrition and healthy diets. The second, and main, part of the note presents the Urban Food System Assessments for Nutrition (UFSAN) Tool, providing an overview of its conceptual basis, key features and a step-wise guide to its implementation.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (series)
    Working paper
    Estimating the food value chain decomposition by industries and primary factors 2024
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    This statistics working paper presents an estimation methodology for decomposing food expenditure across the industries and the primary factors of the food value chain (FVC). The approach outlined is based on the Global Food Dollar methodology developed by the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA-ERS) and Cornell University. FAO has enriched the analytical scope of the methodology by adding the industry and primary factors decomposition. Country coverage has also been increased by adapting the methodology to different data types and sources.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Booklet
    Corporate general interest
    Food balance sheets 2010–2022
    Global, regional and country trends
    2024
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    The Statistics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) compiles Food Balance Sheet (FBS) statistics for 191 countries, which present a comprehensive picture of the agrifood situation of a country in a specified reference period, showing the pattern of a country's food supply and utilizations.The new release of the 2022 FBS data comprises time series from 2010 to 2022.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Booklet
    Corporate general interest
    Food balances 2010–2019
    Global, regional and country trends
    2022
    Also available in:
    No results found.

    FAO's Statistics Division compiles Food Balance Sheet (FBS) statistics for 181 countries. FBS present a comprehensive picture of the agrifood situation of a country in a specified reference period, showing the pattern of a country's food supply and utilizations. FAOSTAT data domain disseminates statistics on food balance sheets compiled using the new methodology from 2010 to 2019. The historic time series back to 1961 consist of data derived from the old FBS methodology.