Hunger Down—But Healthy Food Costs Up. What Should We Do?

Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg 

There’s a difference between ensuring that no one goes hungry and ensuring that every person can nourish their bodies with healthful food. Across the globe, we’re making progress on the first goal—but we still have a ways to go on the second. 

Every year, we look to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, compiled by five United Nations agencies, as a checkpoint on global progress toward food security and healthy diets. This year’s report, analyzing 2025 data, was released last week.

Global hunger (sometimes referred to as “chronic undernourishment”) declined for the third year in a row last year, which is optimistic. That’s not something we can take for granted! An estimated 7.8 percent of the world’s population experienced hunger in 2025, down from 8.6 percent in 2022—or 43 million fewer hungry people worldwide. Although there are regional disparities in hunger levels, a downward trend from 2024 to 2025 was observed consistently across the board, including for the first time in a decade in Africa.

“I am taking these results as positive, despite of all the risk and uncertainties that this sector is facing, and let's hope that we can cope even more with the next year's problems,” Maximo Torero, Chief Economist for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), tells me on an episode of the Food Talk podcast.

Looking at the somewhat more complex metric of food security, which is more effective than hunger at accounting for people having to compromise on diet quantity or quality, we see similar trends but need a nuanced analysis. Yes, moderate and severe food insecurity levels also dropped in 2025, which is positive, but that number sits at 25.8 percent of the global population. Not only is that still higher than pre-pandemic numbers, but on a very basic level, it also means 1 in 4 human beings worldwide are not food-secure—which is morally unacceptable.   

Broadly we’re moving in the right direction, though still far off from a previous target of ending global hunger by 2030. That goal, Maximo admitted, is now “close to impossible to achieve.” But I think he and I both agree: The global progress we’re seeing on hunger is firm proof that international collaboration works, and the slow pace only underscores the urgency of scaling up financing and implementation. 

But as I mentioned, the SOFI report paints a more concerning picture regarding the affordability of healthy diets. 

The number of people unable to afford healthy diets did decrease slightly last year compared to 2024. But within the past five years, the cost of a healthy diet has increased by 25 percent to around $4.28 (in purchasing power parity dollars, a metric that adjusts for cost-of-living and productivity across borders). Still, nearly one-third of the global population could not afford a healthy diet last year.

Maternal and child nourishment is also vastly insufficient, the report finds. Only 30.8 percent of children younger than 2 years old consume a minimally diverse diet, which is unbelievably tragic—and fully preventable. 

The climate crisis is already hurting the food system, but in recent years, we’ve also seen global conflicts threaten to drive food prices even higher. As just one example cited in the report, the current conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran that resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven fuel and fertilizer prices up, and food costs have risen alongside. 

With major global concerns already posed by climate change, the last thing we need is avoidable conflicts piling on even more pressure, Maximo told me. 

"We are looking at more intense and frequent weather events like El Niño now, and therefore this sector needs to be prepared for this. If not, we will have a bigger challenge, and we will move backwards,” he says. 

He later continued: “We need to minimize [human-made challenges]. We cannot have situations created by men when we have such a challenge right now in the world because of climate issues.”

So let’s talk solutions. 

We need are significant increases in public-sector and philanthropic investment and a greater willingness to participate in international collaboration and aid programs, especially from governments of powerful countries like the U.S.

There are more targeted efforts we can push for, too. Although animal products are also expensive, fresh fruits and vegetables make up about the largest share of the cost of healthy diets, about 40 percent. Focusing there, policymakers can more effectively support farmers with better subsidy programs and to facilitate access by improving seed quality, storage facilities, and roads for transporting crops. More regionalized, small-scale food chains can also help prioritize traditional crops at reasonable costs.

“It's very important to put investment in development of local markets, and that includes indigenous foods, that includes nutritious foods,” Maximo Torero, the FAO chief economist, says. 

He says we’re getting better at moving from “just in time” responses to “just in case” proactive solutions to instability. “But we need to keep working on that,” he says, “because resilience, at the end of the line is, how much can (we) absorb the shock and how little time will it take to recover.”

We should be seeing even more effort poured into improving the quality and accessibility of these climate-smart, resilient crops—and strong local markets for them! 

I encourage you to take the time to check out my full conversation with Maximo—one of my favorite people for when I want to get into the nitty-gritty of global food policy—and even read through the SOFI report yourself. And please do reach out at danielle@foodtank.com and share your thoughts and reactions. Let’s keep the global conversations going. 

(Danielle Nierenberg is the President of Food Tank and can be reached at danielle@foodtank.com)