- ➔ Food prices rose throughout 2023 and 2024, pushing up the average cost of a healthy diet globally to 4.46 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day, up from 4.30 PPP dollars in 2023 and 4.01 PPP dollars in 2022.
- ➔ Despite the increase in food prices over 2024, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the world fell from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.60 billion in 2024, fuelled by an economic recovery from the pandemic that has, nevertheless, been uneven across regions and country income groups.
- ➔ In recent years, the percentage and the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet decreased significantly in Asia and marginally in Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern America and Europe, and Oceania. In Africa, on the other hand, the percentage rose from 64.1 percent in 2019 to 66.6 percent in 2024, corresponding to an increase in the numbers from 864 million to 1 billion.
- ➔ The unequal recovery is even more evident across country income groups. The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in low-income countries has been steadily increasing since 2017, whereas in upper-middle- and high-income countries, the number has been declining since 2020. In lower-middle-income countries, the number decreased from 2020 to 2024, but this improvement is mainly explained by the significant decrease in unaffordability in India.
Monitoring economic access to a healthy diet is essential for informing policies aimed at improving food security and nutritional outcomes, thereby contributing to the achievement of SDG Targets 2.1 and 2.2. A healthy diet includes whole grains, legumes, nuts, and an abundance and variety of fruits and vegetables, and can include moderate amounts of eggs, dairy, poultry and fish, and small amounts of red meat.9 A healthy diet can vary widely across regions, but it has four universal characteristics. It is diverse, composed of a variety of foods and food groups; it is adequate in essential nutrients and bioactive compounds important for health; it is balanced across macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and fats); and it is moderate in dietary components that are detrimental to health if consumed in excess.10 Eating a healthy diet throughout the life cycle is critical for preventing all forms of malnutrition, including child stunting and wasting, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight or obesity. It also helps reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain types of cancer.11
The cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) for each country is an estimate of the minimum cost of acquiring a healthy diet, defined as a diet comprising a variety of locally available foods that meet energy and most nutrient requirements.
After careful consideration of the portion of income required for essential non-food goods and services, the CoHD is compared to national income distributions to estimate the prevalence of unaffordability of a healthy diet (PUA) and the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet (NUA). These are measures of the proportion of the population and of the number of people in each country who are unable to afford even the least-cost option of a healthy diet. Together, the PUA and NUA serve as critical indicators for monitoring the inability of agrifood systems to deliver a least-cost healthy diet accessible for all, given existing levels of income inequality within countries.
FAO, in collaboration with the World Bank, systematically monitors these indicators and disseminates the time series through the FAOSTAT database. For the first time in this report, the indicators are reported up to one year prior to publication, whereas previous editions reported data up to two years before. This improvement was made possible by the timely availability of 2024 data on purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factors, food consumer price indices (CPIs), and income distributions used by the World Bank for nowcasting poverty.
In this year’s edition of the report, two major updates are introduced for calculating the cost of a healthy diet and the related affordability indicators (see Annex 1B).
First, newly available household consumption expenditure data for India were incorporated into the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform to update income distributions. As a result, the affordability indicators for India were revised across the entire time series back to 2017, leading to a downward revision in both the PUA and the NUA. This, in turn, led to a downward revision at the global level.
Second, this year’s calculations use updated PPP conversion factors from the 2021 round of the International Comparison Program (ICP). While last year’s edition of the report updated the cost of a healthy diet indicator using 2021 ICP food prices, it continued to rely on PPP factors from the 2017 ICP round. This year, the full adoption of 2021 ICP data enabled the compilation of updated PPP factors that replaced the older series, enhancing the accuracy of affordability estimates.
2.2.1 The cost of a healthy diet
Food prices continued to rise in 2024, driving up the average cost of a healthy diet globally and across all regions. The CoHD indicator has risen worldwide since 2017 (the first year for which FAO disseminates estimates), reaching an average of 4.46 PPP dollars per person per day in 2024 (Table 2.5). As last year’s report presented results up to 2022, it is worth noting that the CoHD rose significantly between 2022 and 2023 – though at a slower rate than from 2021 to 2022, when a sharp increase was observed. Globally, following a peak increase of 11.4 percent between 2021 and 2022, the CoHD rose by 7.2 percent in 2023, and by a more moderate 3.7 percent in 2024.
TABLE 2.5The average cost of a healthy diet, 2019–2024
SOURCE: FAO. 2025. FAOSTAT: Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD). [Accessed on 28 July 2025]. www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/CAHD. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.
In a comparison of the cost of a healthy diet across regions in 2024, the CoHD was highest in Latin America and the Caribbean (an average of 5.16 PPP dollars), with an increase of 7.6 percent between 2022 and 2023, followed by a 3.8 percent increase between 2023 and 2024. In Asia, the average CoHD rose from 4.09 PPP dollars in 2022 to 4.43 PPP dollars in 2024, with Eastern Asia recording by far the highest average CoHD in the region (5.95 PPP dollars), followed by South-eastern Asia (4.63 PPP dollars). Africa saw a 7.5 percent increase in the CoHD from 3.89 PPP dollars in 2022 to 4.18 PPP dollars in 2023, with Northern Africa experiencing the largest surge of 13 percent followed by Southern Africa (7.8 percent) and Eastern Africa (7.7 percent). This upward trend continued in Africa between 2023 and 2024, with CoHD rising by 5.5 percent reaching an average of 4.41 PPP dollars – the greatest year-on-year increase among all world regions in this period. The largest surge in 2024 occurred in Eastern Africa (7.2 percent), followed by Northern Africa (5.5 percent).
Compared to the other regions, Northern America and Europe showed a moderate increase in the average cost of a healthy diet during the COVID-19 pandemic (from 2.96 PPP dollars in 2019 to 3.14 PPP dollars in 2021) but then experienced a substantial increase of 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, followed by an increase of 8.9 percent between 2022 and 2023. The situation slightly improved between 2023 and 2024, with a 3.1 percent increase in the CoHD, reaching 4.02 PPP dollars. In Oceania, the CoHD increased from 3.75 PPP dollars in 2023 to 3.86 PPP dollars in 2024.
When broken down by income group, upper- and lower-middle-income countries (UMICs and LMICs) recorded the highest average cost of a healthy diet in 2024 at 4.83 PPP dollars and 4.48 PPP dollars per day, respectively. Low-income countries (LICs) followed at 4.41 PPP dollars, and then high-income countries (HICs) at 4.22 PPP dollars. In LICs, the average CoHD increased by 7 percent between 2023 and 2024, following a 7.6 percent surge from 2022 to 2023 – the highest increase across income groups.
2.2.2 The prevalence and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet
New estimates of the prevalence (PUA) and the number (NUA) of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the world indicate the continuation of a declining trend after 2020, despite the increase in food prices from 2023 to 2024. This is largely due to the path of economic growth since the pandemic. Furthermore, the update of income data for India, following the availability of new official household consumption survey data, contributed to a further reduction in the estimated number of people in the world who were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024.
Worldwide, an estimated 31.9 percent of people (2.60 billion) were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024, compared to 33.5 percent (2.68 billion) in 2022, equivalent to nearly 80 million fewer people in two years (Figure 2.7 and Table 2.6). After declining by 172 million, from 2.93 billion in 2017 to 2.76 billion in 2019, the NUA rose to 2.91 billion in 2020, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise was followed by a sharp decline in 2021 (2.75 billion) and a continued three-year declining trend in both the prevalence and the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet (Figure 2.7).
FIGURE 2.7 The proportion of the population and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the world decreased from 2020 to 2024
TABLE 2.6Proportion of the population and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet, 2019–2024
However, the recovery has been uneven across regions. In recent years, unaffordability has been decreasing significantly in Asia and only marginally in Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern America and Europe, and Oceania. Conversely, it increased substantially in Africa. Two-thirds of the population of Africa was unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024 – more than double the global percentage of 31.9 percent. The percentages in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean were just below the global average (28.1 percent and 27.4 percent, respectively), while a healthy diet was out of reach for 19.6 percent of the population in Oceania and 5.0 percent in Northern America (Table 2.6).
In Africa, the NUA rose to 1 008.9 million in 2024, up by 71.2 million from 2022 and by 144.9 million compared to 2019. Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a significant deterioration between 2022 and 2024, as the NUA rose by 43.3 million to reach 896.5 million. The majority of people lacking economic access to a healthy diet in 2024 lived in Eastern Africa (365.5 million) and Western Africa (319.6 million). These two regions combined saw an increase of 31.7 million in the NUA from 2022 to 2024. Northern Africa showed a decline from 2019 to 2022 (from 94.6 million to 84.5 million), followed by an uptick in 2023 and 2024. Although Northern Africa had the lowest prevalence in the region in 2024 (41.3 percent), the NUA increased by 27.9 million from 2022 to 2024. Middle Africa also experienced a substantial increase (10 million) in the same period, while Southern Africa showed the smallest increase in the region (1.6 million).
In Asia, a healthy diet was out of reach for 1.35 billion people in 2024 after four consecutive years of improvement; following a peak in 2020, affordability improved, with 291.6 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024 than in 2019. Southern Asia recorded a decline for the fourth consecutive year, with 206.4 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024 compared to 2020, fully offsetting the increase that had occurred in the wake of the pandemic in 2020, a result mostly due to India. Following a significant improvement in 2021 (126 million fewer people), Eastern Asia’s recovery continued up to 2024, with 47.6 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet compared to 2022. South-eastern Asia also experienced an improvement between 2022 and 2024 as the NUA fell by 16.7 million, followed by Central Asia with a drop of 1.5 million. Western Asia was the only subregion to see the NUA increase in this period – by 6.5 million.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the NUA rose by 7.9 million between 2020 and 2021, but this increase was more than offset by an improvement of 15.4 million from 2021 to 2022. In 2024, the total number reached 181.9 million – 1.6 million more people than in 2019 because of the growth in total population – while the PUA dropped slightly, indicating some progress. In South America, there are signs of a slight decrease in the NUA from 2022 to 2024, while the Caribbean saw a marginal increase.
In Northern America and Europe, the NUA fell from 69.9 million in 2019 to 56.2 million in 2024 – corresponding to 13.7 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet. A slight decrease was noted in Northern America, where the PUA decreased from 4.5 percent in 2022 to 4.3 percent in 2024. Europe experienced a similar decrease, from 5.6 percent in 2022 to 5.3 percent in 2024, with 2.6 million fewer people unable to afford a healthy diet. This change was mainly driven by improvements in Eastern Europe.
Oceania saw an increase from 7.8 million in 2019 to 10 million people in 2021, and then a reduction to 9 million by 2023 and no change in 2024.
The unequal recovery is even more evident across country income groups (Table 2.6 and Figure 2.8). The recovery path is slower for low-income countries, where the NUA has been steadily increasing since 2017 (the first year for which FAO publishes estimates). In 2024, a healthy diet was out of reach for 544.7 million people in LICs, equivalent to 72 percent of the population. The halt in economic growth in recent years, coupled with the sharp rise in food prices, has clearly eroded substantially people’s ability to afford nutritious foods especially in LICs, a topic explored in depth in Chapter 3 of the report.
FIGURE 2.8 Excluding India, there is an increasing trend in lower-middle-income countries in the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet
In upper-middle- and high-income countries, on the other hand, the PUA and the NUA have been declining since 2020. In lower-middle-income countries, the NUA decreased between 2020 and 2024, but this improvement is mainly explained by the significant decrease in unaffordability in India. Excluding India from the group shows that, in LMICs, the NUA actually increased from 791 million in 2019 to 869 million in 2024 (Figure 2.8).
Economic access to food is a key dimension of food security. People who are unable to afford even a least-cost healthy diet are likely experiencing some level of food insecurity, which can compromise the quality of their diet. Inadequate diets, in turn, play a critical role in shaping nutritional outcomes – an issue that is explored in the next section.
