NUTRITIOUS diets have become costly for millions, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026.
Titled “Understand and Addressing the High Cost of a Healthy Diet,” the report said that the global cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) rose to 4.28 purchasing-power-parity (PPP) dollars per person per day in 2025.
“Crucial to reversing these trends is making nutritious foods affordable for the most vulnerable, given that a healthy diet is fundamental to human development,” the foreword emphasized.
The report’s core message is blunt: “Healthy diets are essential to achieving SDG 2 but remain economically out of reach for large segments of the global population.”
In Asia the CoHD was estimated at 4.33 PPP dollars, and an estimated 28.9 percent of Asia’s population could not afford that diet in 2025. The result is enough food exists but not equitably accessible in quality terms.
The CoHD is a benchmark built from locally available items that meet nutritional energy and nutrient requirements; it is a cost floor, not a record of what people actually eat. Yet it reveals a consistent pattern: animal-source foods, fruits and vegetables account for nearly 70 percent of the cost of a healthy diet, while starchy staples supply about half the calories but only about one-sixth of the cost. That mismatch helps explain why households under budget pressure consume cheap calories but remain micronutrient deficient.
Climate change deepens this affordability crisis. The report, a joint United Nations brief by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Food Programme, World Health Organization, and United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), highlights that rapid population growth, climate extremes such as El Niño, and energy price shocks intensify strain on agrifood systems and limit access to nutritious foods.
Asia’s diet quality indicators show that this is not just a price problem but a nutritional one: only 34.9 percent of children aged 6–23 months in pooled data achieved minimum dietary diversity, and 65.0 percent of women aged 15–49 reached minimum dietary diversity between 2021 and 2025. Those shortfalls are consequential for development: early childhood diets shape growth, cognition and lifelong health.
The case of the Philippines
The Philippines is a useful local lens. FAO encourages national producers to compute local estimates using retail price series. Still, the Philippines exemplifies the report’s combined risks: high climate vulnerability like typhoons, shifting rainfall and El Niño exposures, reliance on perishable horticulture in many livelihoods, and the acute consequences of logistics and energy costs for supply chains. That combination makes investments in cold chains, storage and resilient production especially salient for Manila and island provinces.
FAO’s analysis finds that long-term productivity gains matter most when research and development prioritize fruits, vegetables, and legumes; paired with irrigation, seed systems, and enabling services, horticultural research and development (R&D) reduces relative diet costs.
Equally, midstream fixes such as better roads, more efficient wholesale logistics, refrigerated transport and reduced post-harvest loss, matter because post-farmgate activities account for roughly 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay.
Digital tools like market price apps, better logistics management, and mobile finance, help smallholders and traders reduce margins and waste and pass savings to consumers.
Economic modelling shows these levers matter in combination. A simulated 10 percent efficiency shock produced the largest reductions in the CoHD when applied to fruits and vegetables and to domestic logistics, with regional variation: productivity shocks matter more in Asia, while midstream gains yield larger benefits in Latin America.
The report also warns that indiscriminate subsidies for staples do little for dietary affordability; repurposing fiscal support toward nutrient-dense, higher-cost food groups delivers more value for nutrition.
For the Philippines and other Asian countries, the practical agenda is clear and operational: scale horticulture-focused R&D, expand cold-chain and rural transport investment, reduce post-harvest losses, improve market information systems, and pair supply investments with nutrition sensitive social protection so demand growth does not push prices up. These measures must be sequenced and inclusive — protecting smallholders, women and youth who could gain from value chain upgrades.
