The Cost of a Healthy Diet Around the World
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Key Takeaways
- Globally, a healthy diet costs an average of $4.46 per person per day.
- The most expensive regions are the Caribbean and Latin America, while North America and Oceania are the cheapest.
- Roughly 2.6 billion people—one-third of the global population—can’t afford a healthy diet.
Healthy diets remain out of reach for billions of people worldwide, largely due to the costs associated with nutritious food.
This infographic shows the daily cost of a healthy diet by region and the number of people who cannot afford one, based on the latest available data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The costs are expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars to account for regional cost-of-living differences.
How Much Does Eating Healthy Cost?
A “healthy diet” is defined as providing 2,330 kilocalories per day, drawn from six food groups: fruits, vegetables, starchy staples, oils, legumes, and animal-sourced foods.
Globally, maintaining a healthy diet costs about $4.46 per person per day, but there are large differences across regions.
The table below shows the cost of a healthy diet for each region, along with the number of people who can’t afford one:
| Region | Average daily cost per person for a healthy diet | Share of population that can’t afford a healthy diet | Population that can’t afford a healthy diet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caribbean | $5.48 | 50.1% | 22.5M |
| Latin America | $4.87 | 26.1% | 159.4M |
| Northern Africa | $4.76 | 41.3% | 112.4M |
| Asia | $4.43 | 28.1% | 1.35B |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | $4.37 | 72.1% | 896.5M |
| Europe | $4.03 | 5.3% | 39.4M |
| Oceania | $3.86 | 19.6% | 9.0M |
| Northern America | $3.85 | 4.3% | 16.7M |
| World | $4.46 | 31.9% | 2.6B |
The Caribbean faces the highest cost at $5.48 per person per day, followed by Latin America ($4.87) and Northern Africa ($4.76). In contrast, healthy diets are cheapest in North America ($3.85) and Oceania ($3.86).
In terms of access, Asia has the highest number of people affected, with 1.35 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet—about 28% of the region’s population. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of the population unable to afford a healthy diet at 72%.
By comparison, Northern America has 16.7 million people affected, representing 4.3% of its population. Oceania has the fewest number of people—9 million—unable to afford a healthy diet, though these differences are influenced by population size.
Why Healthy Food Costs More
Healthy food tends to be more expensive than calorie-rich but nutrition-poor unhealthy food. In fact, a UK-based study by the Food Foundation found that healthy food options are more than twice as expensive as unhealthier alternatives on a per-calorie basis.
In each region, the affordability of a healthy diet depends not only on global food prices, but also on local factors like import dependence and agricultural self-sufficiency for staple foods.
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