A significant, yet fragile, reduction in global hunger has been observed for the third consecutive year, with 2025 marking a continued downward trend. However, the latest report from five United Nations specialized agencies, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026), released on Tuesday, paints a complex picture of progress that is unevenly distributed and insufficient to meet the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The report underscores that while advancements are being made, persistent challenges, including rising costs of healthy diets and the destabilizing impact of global conflicts and climate shocks, threaten to derail hard-won gains.
In 2025, an estimated 7.8 percent of the global population, approximately 645 million people, faced hunger. This represents a notable decrease from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022, signifying a sustained, albeit gradual, improvement. This reduction translates to nearly 14 million fewer people experiencing hunger compared to the previous year and 43 million fewer than in 2022. This positive trajectory offers a glimmer of hope, demonstrating that concerted efforts can yield tangible results in the fight against food insecurity.
However, this global progress is far from uniform. While regions like Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have demonstrated steady improvements, Africa faces a more challenging reality. The continent is now home to the largest absolute number of hungry individuals, with approximately 309 million people affected, surpassing Asia’s 292 million. Although Africa’s previously escalating hunger trend appears to be stabilizing, with the proportion of its population facing hunger decreasing from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20.0 percent in 2025, its sheer population growth means the absolute numbers remain high. This stark regional disparity highlights the critical need for context-specific interventions and increased support for vulnerable regions.
Beyond outright hunger, broader measures of food access reveal a similar pattern of uneven recovery. In 2025, an estimated 25.8 percent of the global population, roughly 2.1 billion people, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. This means these individuals were compelled at times to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they consumed. While this figure is down from 27.1 percent in 2024 and 28.7 percent in 2020, indicating nearly 86 million fewer people facing such insecurity than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020, it remains above pre-pandemic levels. This persistent food insecurity, even when not reaching the level of outright hunger, has profound implications for health, well-being, and overall development.
The regional disparities in food insecurity are particularly stark. More than half of Africa’s population (56.6 percent) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025. This contrasts sharply with Asia (20.3 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (22.9 percent), and Northern America and Europe (8.7 percent). Furthermore, food insecurity continues to be more prevalent in rural areas than in peri-urban and urban settings, reflecting deeper structural inequalities in access to resources and markets. While the gender gap in food insecurity slightly narrowed in 2025, women remain disproportionately affected, underscoring the ongoing need for gender-sensitive approaches to food security initiatives.
Hunger Projections Amidst Middle East Conflict and Climate Uncertainty
The SOFI 2026 report also delves into updated hunger projections for the next five years, with a particular focus on the impact of the recent conflict in the Middle East. The report warns that depending on the duration and ripple effects of the crisis on food inflation, driven by elevated energy and fertilizer prices, approximately 510 to 520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030. This projection is higher than the pre-conflict scenario, which estimated 503 million people. While the global number of undernourished people is still expected to decrease by 20 percent by 2030, the conflict’s influence poses a significant threat to achieving the SDG 2 target of Zero Hunger.
Crucially, these projections do not account for other potential disruptors, such as the anticipated effects of weather extremes like El Niño in 2026 and 2027. Such events could further exacerbate the existing challenges and compound the impact of geopolitical instability. The report’s joint authors – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) – issue a stern warning: the Middle East conflict, coupled with extreme weather events and reductions in official development assistance and humanitarian funding, are collectively jeopardizing the progress made in eradicating global hunger.
Stalled Progress on Global Nutrition Targets
The SOFI 2026 report also casts a critical light on global nutrition targets, revealing that progress remains insufficient to meet international commitments, including those for 2030. Key indicators for maternal and child nutrition, such as child stunting, wasting, overweight, low birthweight, and exclusive breastfeeding rates, show only marginal improvements. The pace of progress is too slow to achieve the set targets.
Compounding these concerns, anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years is showing a worsening trend. Simultaneously, the prevalence of adult obesity continues its steady increase, rising from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024. This is directly contrary to the target of halting the rise in obesity by 2025. Furthermore, only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimally diverse diet, and a staggering 150 million children under five years of age are still affected by stunting.
Regional variations in nutrition outcomes are also significant. While the prevalence of child stunting is declining in Africa and is on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, and exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving across most regions with available data, other areas show concerning trends. Nearly all regions are experiencing widening gaps in addressing anaemia among women. Child overweight, a growing concern, is increasing rapidly in Oceania. These divergent trends underscore the complex and multifaceted nature of malnutrition, requiring tailored interventions that address specific regional challenges and nutritional deficiencies.
The Prohibitive Cost of a Healthy Diet
A central theme of this year’s SOFI report is the escalating cost of a healthy diet, defined as the average minimum expenditure required to obtain locally available foods that meet energy and nutrient requirements. According to FAO and WHO guidelines, a healthy diet is one that is adequate, balanced, diverse, and moderate. The report strongly emphasizes that the prohibitive cost of such diets remains a major impediment to achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). While lowering these costs is essential, it is not, by itself, sufficient to guarantee improved dietary quality and nutrition outcomes.
In 2025, the average global cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day. This represents a significant increase from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017. Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the highest average cost at 4.91 PPP dollars per day. Concurrently, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet has seen a decline, from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the global population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025.
However, this global aggregate figure masks profound regional disparities. In Africa, the affordability of a healthy diet worsened markedly, with 66.6 percent of the population unable to afford it in 2025 – more than double the levels observed in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean. This highlights a critical issue of economic access, where even if nutritious foods are available, they remain out of reach for a significant portion of the population, particularly in the most vulnerable regions.
The cost of healthy diets varies significantly across regions, influenced by structural differences in agrifood systems. Animal source foods, fruits, and vegetables constitute the largest share of these costs, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. Animal source foods are the primary cost driver for a healthy diet in Africa, whereas vegetables represent the largest component in Latin America and the Caribbean. These differences underscore the need for localized strategies that address the specific drivers of food costs in different contexts.
The efficiency of food value chains plays a pivotal role in determining prices. Post-farmgate activities, encompassing processing, logistics, and wholesale, account for a substantial 70 to 75 percent of what consumers ultimately pay, with up to 40 percent of total costs arising in these segments. Improving efficiency in these areas is therefore critical, particularly for reducing the cost of perishable, nutrient-rich foods that are often essential for a healthy diet.
Policy Recommendations and the Path Forward
The report advocates for context-specific policy responses to reduce the cost of a healthy diet. These include measures to expand the supply of nutritious foods while simultaneously lowering structural costs across agrifood value chains. This necessitates significant investments in infrastructure, research and development, irrigation systems, and cold chains. Reforms in subsidy regimes, trade facilitation, and regulatory frameworks are also identified as crucial components of a comprehensive strategy.
Furthermore, targeted interventions that boost productivity, reduce food losses, and promote sustainable agricultural practices can offer a dual benefit: simultaneously improving nutrition outcomes, strengthening resilience to shocks, and supporting climate goals. The report concludes with a powerful statement: "The work that lies ahead over the years to 2030 is immense. However, a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building."
Official Responses and Perspectives
The leaders of the UN agencies involved in the report offered their perspectives on the findings and the path forward:
QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General, emphasized the need for accelerated action: "The report shows that progress is possible, but we must move faster. Ending hunger and making healthy diets affordable requires political commitment, sustained investment and enabling policies. Recent crises – from natural disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic to man-made disasters like hotspots of conflicts, the war in Ukraine, the Gaza crisis, and the recent Strait of Hormuz disruption – have demonstrated both the resilience of agrifood systems and the need to strengthen them further to better serve the world’s most vulnerable people, farmers and consumers."
Alvaro Lario, IFAD President, highlighted the rising costs and the need for investment: "SOFI tells us that the cost of a healthy diet continues to rise and that nearly 2.7 billion people may still be unable to afford a healthy diet. Resilient value chains must be a central part of the answer. Our task now is to turn the evidence SOFI provides into investment – and to do so through partnership. Together, we can build the value chains, market systems and rural economies that make healthy food affordable for all."
Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, focused on the impact on children: "Every child deserves the chance to grow and develop to their full potential, and this starts with access to nutritious, affordable food. This report is a stark reminder that food systems fail millions of children and families. Food, health, education and social protection must go hand in hand to protect the most vulnerable children and women from global shocks."
Carl Skau, WFP Acting Executive Director, underscored the human cost of food insecurity: "Behind every number in this report is a family counting the cost of food. Conflict and climate shocks push them further beyond their means. We must continue working with partner agencies, governments and communities to build food systems that hold up under shock, so families can afford nutritious diets, even in times of crisis. We now need sustained investment to match the scale of the challenge."
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, stressed the link between healthy diets and overall health: "While we welcome the clear progress we have made in reducing hunger, a healthy diet still remains unaffordable for one in three people globally. Obesity is rising and progress on maternal and child nutrition is stalling. But we know what works: policies that make healthy food the easy choice, promoting breastfeeding, front-of-pack labelling, taxing unhealthy products, and protecting children from harmful marketing. Healthy diets are not a luxury – they are the foundation of health and must be within everyone’s reach."
The SOFI 2026 report serves as a critical call to action, highlighting that while progress in combating hunger is achievable, the path forward is fraught with challenges. Addressing the interconnected issues of conflict, climate change, economic inequality, and the rising cost of healthy food will require unprecedented global cooperation, sustained investment, and transformative policy shifts to ensure a food-secure and nourished future for all.
