The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is expected to leave millions more people facing hunger by the end of the decade, threatening to erode recent global progress in tackling food insecurity, according to a new United Nations report.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, released on Tuesday by five UN agencies, warns that the conflict is driving up energy and fertiliser prices, fuelling food inflation and worsening the global hunger outlook.
The report estimates that 510 million to 520 million people could still be facing hunger by 2030, compared with a pre-conflict projection of 503 million, highlighting the growing global impact of the Middle East crisis. The projections do not factor in other risks such as extreme weather events, including El Niño, which could further worsen food insecurity.
The UN agencies also warned that the conflict, combined with increasingly frequent climate shocks and declining humanitarian and development funding, risks undermining progress towards ending hunger by 2030.
Global hunger falls
Despite these concerns, the report said global hunger fell for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress remains possible.
An estimated 7.8% of the world's population, or about 645 million people, experienced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022. That represents nearly 14 million fewer hungry people than a year earlier and 43 million fewer than in 2022.
The recovery, however, remains highly uneven. Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean continued to record improvements, while Africa now accounts for the world's largest hungry population, with about 309 million people affected, compared with 292 million in Asia.
The report also found that around 2.1 billion people – or 25.8% of the global population – experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, meaning they were forced at times to reduce either the quality or quantity of the food they consumed. While this marks an improvement from 27.1% in 2024, the figure remains above pre-pandemic levels.
Regional disparities remain significant, with 56.6% of Africa's population experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity, compared with 20.3% in Asia, 22.9% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7% in Northern America and Europe.
The report was jointly produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Slow progress on global nutrition targets
The report highlights that global progress on maternal and child nutrition also remains insufficient to meet international commitments, including the 2030 nutrition targets.
Indicators such as child stunting, wasting, overweight, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding show only marginal improvements and progress is too slow to meet the targets. At the same time, anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years is worsening, while the prevalence of adult obesity shows a steady increase – from 12.1 percent in 2012 to 16.2 percent in 2024 – contrary to the target of halting its rise by 2025. Only 30.8 percent of children aged 6 to 23 months worldwide consume a minimally diverse diet and 150 million children under five years of age are still stunted.
Progress again varies significantly across regions. The prevalence of child stunting is declining in Africa and is on track to meet the 2030 target in Asia, while exclusive breastfeeding rates are improving across all regions where data is available. However, nearly all regions are experiencing widening gaps in addressing anaemia among women, and child overweight is increasing rapidly in Oceania.
The cost of a healthy diet
This year’s SOFI report takes a closer look at the cost of a healthy diet – the average minimum expenditure required to obtain locally available foods that meet energy and most nutrient requirements. According to FAO and WHO, a healthy diet is one that is adequate, balanced, diverse, and moderate.
The report underscores that costs remain a major constraint to achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), although lowering such costs alone will not be sufficient to improve 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, up from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017, with the highest levels recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean (4.91 PPP dollars). At the same time, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet has declined – from 2.97 billion (37.4 percent of the global population) in 2021 to 2.69 billion (32.7 percent) in 2025.
However, this trend masks significant regional disparities. In Africa, affordability worsened markedly, with 66.6 percent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025 – more than double the levels observed in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Healthy diet costs vary widely across regions due to structural differences in agrifood systems. Animal source foods, fruits and vegetables account for the largest share of costs, while starchy staples contribute relatively little. Animal source foods are the largest contributor to the cost of a healthy diet in Africa, whereas vegetables represent the largest share in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Food value chains are a major determinant of prices. Post-farmgate activities account for 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay, with up to 40 percent of total costs arising in processing, logistics and wholesale. Improving efficiency in these segments is therefore critical, particularly for lowering the cost of perishable, nutrient-rich foods.
Reducing the cost of a healthy diet requires context-specific policy responses that expand the supply of nutritious foods while lowering structural costs across agrifood value chains. This includes investments in infrastructure, research and development, irrigation and cold chains, alongside reforms in subsidies, trade facilitation and regulatory frameworks.
Targeted interventions that boost productivity, reduce losses and promote sustainable practices can simultaneously improve nutrition outcomes, strengthen resilience and support climate goals.
“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,” the report argues.
What they said
FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu: “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 disaster 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.”
IFAD President, Alvaro Lario: “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.”
UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell: “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.”
WFP Acting Executive Director, Carl Skau: “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.”
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: "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." - TradeArabia News Service
