14 July 2026 | 10:00 – 13:00 EDT | UN headquarters, Conference Room 6
Interpretation in all UN official languages will be provided
In preparation for the 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report launch on 21 July in Rome, a Special Event dedicated to the theme of this upcoming report – Understanding and Addressing the High Cost of a Healthy Diet – will be held on the margins of the ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York.
Given the key role of healthy diets to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the event will explore the cost of a healthy diet (CoHD), the methodology applied to determine its cost, as well as the drivers behind CoHD and potential policy responses to address these costs.
Building on the 2025 SOFI report on global food price inflation, the 2026 edition of SOFI report will examine the challenges presented by the high cost of healthy diets to end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. The report will also clarify the methodology used to calculate CoHD, analyze the factors influencing the cost of a healthy diet, the differences in cost between certain regions and geographical areas, as well as links between specific economic variables and aspects of countries’ agricultural value chains, and recommend policies and investments aimed at reducing the CoHD.
Given the essential role of healthy diets in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), including targets 2.1 and 2.2 on ending hunger, improving food security and nutrition, as well as in contributing to children’s health, growth and development and to improving livelihoods, significant efforts have been dedicated to the topic. In particular, the 2020 edition of the SOFI introduced two indicators to quantify two specific features related to economic access to healthy diets, namely their cost and affordability.
Additionally, the 2025 edition of the SOFI demonstrated the impact of global food price inflation on global food security, affecting both the quantity and quality of diets and revealing that 2.6 billion people worldwide still lack access to a healthy diet.
Further, the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2024 estimates productivity losses of approximately 8 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a result of the consumption of unhealthy diets linked to obesity and non-communicable diseases. In 2024, FAO and WHO advanced a unified definition of a healthy diet based on four core principles to support policy design for improved diets and to better assess healthy diets.
The analysis presented in the report aims to enhance understanding of the methodology employed to calculate the cost of a healthy diet, explore the causes of higher CoHD in certain regions and geographical areas, and examine the correlation between higher CoHD with specific economic variables and certain features of countries’ agricultural value chain. Based on the aforementioned analysis, the report will put forth concrete policy and investment recommendations to address the challenges stemming from the high cost of healthy diet.
Dining and Cooking