UN puts world hunger at 645 million as a healthy diet climbs to 4.28 dollars a day

Global hunger fell for a third consecutive year in 2025, while the cost of the food needed to keep a person healthy reached the highest level the United Nations has recorded. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published on 21 July 2026 by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization, estimates that 645 million people, or 7.8 per cent of the world's population, faced hunger last year. That is down from 8.1 per cent in 2024 and 8.6 per cent in 2022, a fall of about 14 million people in a year and 43 million since 2022.

The wider measure moved the same way. Around 2.1 billion people, 25.8 per cent of the world, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, down from 27.1 per cent in 2024 and 28.7 per cent in 2020.

The price figures run in the opposite direction. The report puts the average global cost of a healthy diet at 4.28 purchasing power parity dollars per person per day in 2025, up from 3.44 in 2021 and 2.94 in 2017. About 2.69 billion people, 32.7 per cent of the world, could not afford that basket, down from 2.97 billion, or 37.4 per cent, in 2021, but still close to one person in three. The World Health Organization's Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in the joint release that while the fall in hunger was welcome, a healthy diet remained unaffordable for one in three people globally.

The regional split is the sharpest finding. Africa now carries the largest hungry population, 309 million people or 20.0 per cent of its population, ahead of Asia's 292 million. More than half of Africa's population, 56.6 per cent, faced moderate or severe food insecurity, against 20.3 per cent in Asia, 22.9 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7 per cent in Northern America and Europe. Two thirds of Africans, 66.6 per cent, cannot afford a healthy diet. Latin America and the Caribbean records the highest cost of that diet at 4.91 purchasing power parity dollars a day.

Nutrition indicators barely shifted. About 150 million children under five remain stunted, and only 30.8 per cent of children aged six to 23 months receive a minimally diverse diet. Adult obesity rose to 16.2 per cent in 2024 from 12.1 per cent in 2012, moving away from the target the same agencies set. The FAO's chief economist, Maximo Torero, told the launch that depending on how long the current crisis keeps food inflation elevated, between 510 and 520 million people may still face hunger in 2030, compared with an earlier projection of 503 million.

Not everyone accepts the framing. On the same day, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems said 645 million is 61 million more people than before the pandemic in 2019, and argued the report gives too little weight to concentration in food supply chains, citing an estimate that traders, processors, distributors and retailers add 70 to 75 per cent of what consumers pay after the farm gate. Its co-chair, Mamadou Goita, said healthy diets are becoming a luxury for billions while farmers are paid less. The UN agencies instead point to investment, political commitment and enabling policy.

Australia sits inside the high income aggregate where the global report shows little, but its own two national numbers do not agree with each other. On 5 September 2025 the Australian Bureau of Statistics published its first modern national estimate, drawn from the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey conducted between January 2023 and March 2024: 13.2 per cent of households, about 1.3 million, experienced food insecurity, with 8.5 per cent moderate or severe and 34.0 per cent among lone parent families with dependent children. Foodbank Australia's Hunger Report 2025, released on 5 November 2025 from an online survey of 4,520 people fielded between 24 June and 17 July 2025, put the figure at one in three households, about 3.5 million. Both describe using the United States Department of Agriculture household food security survey module. Neither has published a reconciliation of the difference.

Writing in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia on 4 October 2025, Katherine Kent noted that the bureau's own estimate jumped because the instrument changed, from a two item question that produced 4.0 per cent in 2011 to 2012 to the ten item module that produced 13.2 per cent.

What is not yet known is whether the third annual fall survives 2026. The UN's own projection is conditional on the duration of current food price pressure, and the report does not model a longer shock. Nor is there any published account of why two Australian surveys claiming the same instrument differ by roughly 20 percentage points, since their sampling frames, fieldwork dates and treatment of marginal food insecurity have not been compared side by side in the material released so far.