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Author: Herforth, A., Bai, Y., Venkat, A., Mahrt, K., Ebel, A. & Masters, W.A.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925133725X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
Price and affordability are key barriers to accessing sufficient, safe, nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In this study, the least-cost items available in local markets are identified to estimate the cost of three diet types: energy sufficient, nutrient adequate, and healthy (meeting food-based dietary guidelines). For price and availability the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (ICP) dataset is used, which provides food prices in local currency units (LCU) for 680 foods and non-alcoholic beverages in 170 countries in 2017. In addition, country case studies are developed with national food price datasets in United Republic of Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Ghana and Myanmar. The findings reveal that healthy diets by any definition are far more expensive than the entire international poverty line of USD 1.90, let alone the upper bound portion of the poverty line that can credibly be reserved for food of USD 1.20. The cost of healthy diets exceeds food expenditures in most countries in the Global South. The findings suggest that nutrition education and behaviour change alone will not substantially improve dietary consumption where nutrient adequate and healthy diets, even in their cheapest form, are unaffordable for the majority of the poor. To make healthy diets cheaper, agricultural policies, research, and development need to shift toward a diversity of nutritious foods.
Author: Herforth, A., Bai, Y., Venkat, A., Mahrt, K., Ebel, A. & Masters, W.A.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925133725X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 108
Get Book
Book Description
Price and affordability are key barriers to accessing sufficient, safe, nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In this study, the least-cost items available in local markets are identified to estimate the cost of three diet types: energy sufficient, nutrient adequate, and healthy (meeting food-based dietary guidelines). For price and availability the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (ICP) dataset is used, which provides food prices in local currency units (LCU) for 680 foods and non-alcoholic beverages in 170 countries in 2017. In addition, country case studies are developed with national food price datasets in United Republic of Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Ghana and Myanmar. The findings reveal that healthy diets by any definition are far more expensive than the entire international poverty line of USD 1.90, let alone the upper bound portion of the poverty line that can credibly be reserved for food of USD 1.20. The cost of healthy diets exceeds food expenditures in most countries in the Global South. The findings suggest that nutrition education and behaviour change alone will not substantially improve dietary consumption where nutrient adequate and healthy diets, even in their cheapest form, are unaffordable for the majority of the poor. To make healthy diets cheaper, agricultural policies, research, and development need to shift toward a diversity of nutritious foods.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925132901X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions. The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report puts a spotlight on diet quality as a critical link between food security and nutrition. Meeting SDG 2 targets will only be possible if people have enough food to eat and if what they are eating is nutritious and affordable. The report also introduces new analysis of the cost and affordability of healthy diets around the world, by region and in different development contexts. It presents valuations of the health and climate-change costs associated with current food consumption patterns, as well as the potential cost savings if food consumption patterns were to shift towards healthy diets that include sustainability considerations. The report then concludes with a discussion of the policies and strategies to transform food systems to ensure affordable healthy diets, as part of the required efforts to end both hunger and all forms of malnutrition.
Author: Headey, Derek D.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56
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Book Description
Cost and affordability of healthy diet (CoAHD) metrics developed in a handful of academic studies have quickly become mainstream food security indicators among major development institutions. The World Bank and FAO now report CoAHD statistics in their widely used databanks, and the UN’s State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) reports CoAHD metrics on an annual basis, with the headline conclusion being that over 3 billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. While quantifying affordability constraints is indeed a vital addition to the suite of global food security indicators, there is a dearth of scientific analysis on the accuracy and sensitivity of CoAHD methods. Published global CoAHD estimates rely on three implicit assumptions: that demographic differences across countries have little effect on average diet costs; that non-food expenditure requirements have little systematic variation across countries; and that international food price data is representative in a population sense and product coverage sense. Testing these assumptions on the cost of the EAT-Lancet reference diet, we find sizable sensitivity of baseline methods to adjusting diet affordability estimates for systematic cross-country differences in demographic profiles and non-food expenditure requirements, smaller effects of adjusting for inadequate food product coverage in international price data, and inconclusive evidence on issues of urban bias in price surveys. Our proposed methodological improvements significantly change country, regional and global estimates of healthy diet affordability, though not the headline conclusion that several billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Even so, the accuracy, rigor, and reliability of CoAHD statistics warrant closer investigation given their widespread adoption and utilization.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925136690X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
FAO is focusing its attention on the pursuit of healthy diets and transformations of agrifood systems to ensure healthy diets are affordable for all. Measuring and systematically monitoring the cost and affordability of healthy diets and making progress towards ensuring the affordability of healthy diets is of upmost importance and is urgently needed. To this end, FAO is committed to institutionalize the computation of the least-cost healthy diet, and the corresponding affordability indicator, and to publish updated estimates in the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, as well as provide the full data series on FAOSTAT. This background paper to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 report presents the new methodological refinements applied in the estimation of the average cost of a healthy diet. This is an important methodological update as it results in a more robust indicator that provides greater transparency and supports long-term systematic monitoring utilizing annually updated price data. The paper then explores potential mechanisms and data sources for monitoring globally the cost of a healthy diet.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251318751
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 42
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Book Description
Considering the detrimental environmental impact of current food systems, and the concerns raised about their sustainability, there is an urgent need to promote diets that are healthy and have low environmental impacts. These diets also need to be socio-culturally acceptable and economically accessible for all. Acknowledging the existence of diverging views on the concepts of sustainable diets and healthy diets, countries have requested guidance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) on what constitutes sustainable healthy diets. These guiding principles take a holistic approach to diets; they consider international nutrition recommendations; the environmental cost of food production and consumption; and the adaptability to local social, cultural and economic contexts. This publication aims to support the efforts of countries as they work to transform food systems to deliver on sustainable healthy diets, contributing to the achievement of the SDGs at country level, especially Goals 1 (No Poverty), 2 (Zero Hunger), 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), 4 (Quality Education), 5 (Gender Equality) and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and 13 (Climate Action).
Author: Raghunathan, Kalyani
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 54
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Book Description
Malnutrition is endemic in India. In 2015-16 some 38% of preschool children were stunted and 21% were wasted, while more than half of Indian mothers and children were anemic. There are many posited explanations for the high rates of malnutrition in India, but surprisingly few discuss the role of Indian diets, particularly the affordability of nutritious diets given low wages and the significant structural problems facing India’s agricultural sector. This study was undertaken to address knowledge gaps around the affordability of nutritious diets in rural India. To do so we used nationally representative rural price and wage data to estimate the least cost means of satisfying India-specific dietary recommendations, referred to as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD), and assess the affordability of this diet relative to male and female wages for unskilled laborers. Although we find that dietary costs increased substantially over 2001-2011 for both men and women, rural wage rates increased more rapidly, implying that nutritious diets became substantially more affordable over time. However, in absolute terms nutritious diets in 2011 were still expensive relative to unskilled wages, constituting approximately 50-60% of male and about 70-80% of female daily wages, and were often even higher relative to minimum wages earned from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Since many poor households have significant numbers of dependents and substantial non-food expenditure requirements, it follows that nutritious diets are often highly unaffordable for the rural poor; we estimate that 45-64% of the rural poor cannot afford a nutritious diet that meets India’s national food-based dietary guidelines. Our results point to the need to more closely monitor food prices through a nutritional lens, and to shift India’s existing food policies away from their heavy bias towards cereals. Achieving nutritional security in India requires a much more holistic focus on improving the affordability of the full range of nutritious food groups and ensuring that economic growth results in sustained income growth for the poor.
Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 925134325X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
In recent years, several major drivers have put the world off track to ending world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. The challenges have grown with the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures. This report presents the first global assessment of food insecurity and malnutrition for 2020 and offers some indication of what hunger might look like by 2030 in a scenario further complicated by the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes new estimates of the cost and affordability of healthy diets, which provide an important link between the food security and nutrition indicators and the analysis of their trends. Altogether, the report highlights the need for a deeper reflection on how to better address the global food security and nutrition situation. To understand how hunger and malnutrition have reached these critical levels, this report draws on the analyses of the past four editions, which have produced a vast, evidence-based body of knowledge of the major drivers behind the recent changes in food security and nutrition. These drivers, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, include conflicts, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns – all exacerbated by the underlying causes of poverty and very high and persistent levels of inequality. In addition, millions of people around the world suffer from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. From a synthesized understanding of this knowledge, updates and additional analyses are generated to create a holistic view of the combined effects of these drivers, both on each other and on food systems, and how they negatively affect food security and nutrition around the world. In turn, the evidence informs an in-depth look at how to move from silo solutions to integrated food systems solutions. In this regard, the report proposes transformative pathways that specifically address the challenges posed by the major drivers, also highlighting the types of policy and investment portfolios required to transform food systems for food security, improved nutrition, and affordable healthy diets for all. The report observes that, while the pandemic has caused major setbacks, there is much to be learned from the vulnerabilities and inequalities it has laid bare. If taken to heart, these new insights and wisdom can help get the world back on track towards the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms.
Author: Holleman, C.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251384967
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 80
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Book Description
This background paper to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 presents an innovative analysis of within-country variability of the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD). The study uses an innovative spatial perspective by analysing the changes along the urban–rural catchment areas (URCA) and using the Living Standards Measurement Studies (LSMS) of 11 African countries. The results show that the cost of a healthy diet in peri-urban areas is lower than it is in urban areas, but the percentage of the population unable to afford a healthy diet is always higher in the surroundings of urban centres. The gap is particularly large between small cities and their surrounding areas, and the share of population unable to secure a healthy diet is disproportionally high in the more remote rural areas. The paper also investigates three methodological issues that were encountered during the analysis to provide evidence on the validity of the FAO Healthy Diet Basket (HDB) methodology for the estimation of subnational cost and affordability of a healthy diet.
Author: Pauw, Karl
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 38
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Book Description
One of the greatest global challenges today is ensuring widespread availability and equitable access to affordable, nutritious foods produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. A rich literature exists around the definition of a healthy diet and the drivers of dietary change. We contribute to this literature by proposing a new quantifiable diet deprivation measure estimated from standard household consumption and expenditure surveys. The Reference Diet Deprivation (ReDD) index measures the incidence, breadth, and depth of diet deprivation across multiple, essential food groups in a single indicator. Although useful as a standalone measure, we show how ReDD can be integrated into an economywide model to examine changes in household diet quality under different simulation scenarios. Using Nigeria as case study, hypothetical agricultural productivity growth scenarios reveal that dairy, pulses, fruit, and red meat value chains have the greatest potential to reduce overall diet deprivation in Nigeria per unit of GDP growth generated, while productivity growth in more widely consumed crops such as cereals and root crops do little to improve diet quality. These findings have implications for the prioritization of agricultural development initiatives aimed at improving the quality of diets. More generally, the integration of a diet quality indicator in an economywide model allows for a deeper understanding of the drivers of dietary change.
Author: Harold Alderman
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464810885
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Most of the people in low and middle-income countries covered by social protection receive assistance in the form of in-kind food. The origin of such support is rooted in countries’ historical pursuit of three interconnected objectives, namely attaining self-sufficiency in food, managing domestic food prices, and providing income support to the poor. This volume sheds light on the complex, bumpy and non-linear process of how some flagship food-based social protection programs have evolved over time, and how they currently work. In particular, it lays out the broad trends in reforms, including a growing move from in-kind modalities to cash transfers, from universality to targeting, and from agriculture to social protection. Case studies from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and United States document the specific experiences of managing the process of reform and implementation, including enhancing our understanding of the opportunities and challenges with different social protection transfer modalities.
