Healthy diet unaffordable for 38.6% Bangladeshis, South Asia’s second-highest: UN report
The report estimated that 38.6% of Bangladesh's population could not afford a healthy diet last year, compared with 63.0% in Pakistan.
Nearly two out of every five Bangladeshis – about 6.78 crore people – could not afford a healthy diet in 2025, the second-highest unaffordability rate in South Asia after Pakistan, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report released yesterday (21 July) by five United Nations agencies.
Jointly produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), World Food Programme (WFP), and World Health Organization (WHO), the report estimated that 38.6% of Bangladesh's population could not afford a healthy diet last year, compared with 63.0% in Pakistan.
It defines a Healthy Diet Basket (HDB) as a diet providing 2,330 kilocalories per person daily across six food groups: starchy staples, animal-source foods, legumes, nuts and seeds, vegetables, fruits, and oils and fats.
Globally, a healthy diet remained out of reach for 2.69 billion people (32.7%) in 2025. Unaffordability was highest in Africa (66.6%), followed by Asia (28.9%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (25.7%).
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Md Ruhul Amin, professor at the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Dhaka, said the HDB remains beyond the reach of many lower and lower-middle-income households.
Nutritious foods such as dairy products, fish, meat and fruits are consumed in limited quantities because of their cost, while local prices rise quickly with global markets but fall much more slowly, keeping healthy diets unaffordable despite improved purchasing power, he added.
Cost of a healthy diet keeps rising
The report estimated the cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) in Bangladesh rose to $4.59 purchasing power parity (PPP) per person per day in 2025 from $3.09 PPP in 2017. The PPP reflects the amount of local currency with the same purchasing power as $4.59 in the US.
Calculated using the HDB, the CoHD is driven mainly by animal-source foods, fruits and vegetables, while starchy staples account for a relatively small share. Bangladesh recorded South Asia's third-highest CoHD after Bhutan ($6.17) and Sri Lanka ($5.21), while Pakistan ($3.94) had the region's lowest despite the highest unaffordability.
Despite rising costs, affordability improved as the share of Bangladeshis unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 62.8% in 2017 to 38.6% in 2025, reducing the number affected from 10.18 crore to 6.78 crore. The report said incomes available for food grew faster than food prices.
Globally, average CoHD rose to $4.28 in 2025 from $3.44 in 2021 and $2.94 in 2017, reaching $4.91 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the same period, the number unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 2.97 billion (37.4%) to 2.69 billion (32.7%).
The report called for context-specific policies to expand food supply, reduce agrifood value-chain costs, and improve transport, storage, processing, market information and food-loss reduction to make nutritious foods more affordable.
