The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026—published jointly by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO—estimates the minimum cost of a healthy diet and whether income makes that cost affordable.
The global price of a healthy diet
In 2025, an estimated 2.69 billion people could not afford the minimum cost of a healthy diet.
2.69 billion people
Average minimum cost of a healthy diet
PPP dollars / person / day
The number moved two ways
Unaffordability fell, while the minimum cost rose.
The estimated number unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 2.97 billion people, or 37.4%, in 2021. At the same time, the global average minimum cost rose from 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017 to 4.28 in 2025.
Regional differences remain large: the 2025 estimate for Africa was 66.6%. Food choice cannot be explained by knowledge alone.
Read it carefully
The $4.28 figure is not a household’s daily food budget.
Purchasing power parity is used for international comparison. A “healthy diet” is estimated from the least costly foods that meet national food-based dietary guidelines; it is not a complete household model of taste, cooking equipment or travel time.
What to keep
When looking at food, do not leave price and time outside the frame.
How MorselFlow fits
A record is for seeing real life—not blaming it.
MorselFlow does not call a bought or quickly assembled meal a failure. It keeps the photo so you can see which choices continued.
A meal chosen within the limits of price, time and availability is still part of your flow.
This article explains international statistics for a general audience. It does not assess an individual food budget or nutrition status. A global PPP indicator cannot be directly converted into one country’s household grocery cost.