Making Healthy Diets Affordable for All: Policy overview and recommendations

Beyond a basic need, food is a crucial component that affects our health and wellbeing now and in the long-term. Yet, billions of people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. Addressing this issue requires looking into the existing policy and structural flaws and taking bold actions to make healthy diets affordable for all.

The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as a condition where “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Unfortunately, healthy diets remain out of reach for many, according to the 2024 Global Food Policy Report.

Poverty, Price, and Preference

Experts measured the cost of a healthy diet using “the least expensive combination of locally available items that meet a food-based dietary guideline”. With this metric, over two billion people around the world cannot afford a healthy diet. Most of them live in low- and middle-income countries, notably South Asia and Africa.

However, it is important to note that these standards do not cover accessibility and the time commitment required to turn nutritious ingredients into edible meals. So, the actual numbers may be higher.

Affordability is a key aspect in creating better food systems for all. Making healthy diets affordable for everyone means addressing the combined challenge of poverty, price, and preference.

Poverty: With the ever-increasing cost-of-living, many people do not earn enough to constantly buy healthy foods. Additionally, current social protection mechanisms in Asia and Africa are far from enough to bridge the gap.
Price: Agricultural policies and consumer subsidies largely favor staple crops and calorie-dense foods (rice, wheat, sugar, etc). Meanwhile, nutrient-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, etc) receive less support or are even taxed, making them relatively more expensive. Another contributor to the price is the poor transport, storage, and logistics infrastructures, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
Preference: There is a stronger consumer demand for sugar and animal-sourced foods than for vegetables and fruits.

Making Healthy Diets Affordable

The report estimates at least $1.3 trillion per year is needed to provide over two billion people in 128 countries cash to purchase healthy diets. Therefore, achieving healthy diet affordability needs a range of aggressive and bold actions. The authors state, “It requires a revolution in the way we think about food policy’s fundamental role in providing healthy diets, for all people, at all times.”

Below are the report’s six recommendations to make healthy foods affordable for all:

Improved monitoring: This includes food price data collection and analysis as well as wage monitoring with varying survey methods.
Rapid and just economic growth: Pro-poor economic in low- and middle-income countries also need to significantly outpace the population growth.
Realigned agricultural policies and investments: Restructuring policies to make nutritious foods more affordable through financial mechanisms and agricultural diversification.
Improved regulation and investment of transportation, infrastructure, and logistics systems: This should cover domestic and international trade as well as developing efficient businesses throughout the entire value chain.
Holistic and nutrition-sensitive social protection: Especially in low- and middle-income countries, the coverage, size, comprehensiveness, and nutritional adequacy needs improvement alongside education on nutrition and healthy diets.
Double-duty interventions: It is crucial to address the risk of both ends of malnutrition—nutritional deficiencies as well as problems of overweight, obesity, and diet-related non-communicable diseases.

Toward Sustainable Food Systems

Sustainable development’s principle of leaving no one behind must be the bottom line of all industry transformations. In our efforts toward sustainable food systems that do not harm the planet and future generations, it is crucial to make healthy foods affordable for as many people as possible.

As IFPRI Director General Johan Swinnen said, “Healthy diets, sustainably sourced, should be a right for all of humanity. To strengthen human and planetary wellbeing, we need sincere efforts to address the many challenges impeding the achievement of this goal, especially for the most vulnerable people.”

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