One in three people cannot afford to eat a healthy diet, a new report has found, prompting calls for urgent action on food affordability.

There are 2.69 billion people unable to afford a diverse diet that meets their energy and nutrient needs, and it will take “immense” amounts of work to achieve the global target of zero hunger by 2030, the annual report from five UN agencies warned.

Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, with 7.8% of people affected, down from 8.1% in 2024. There were also signs that a prolonged upward trend in Africa was coming to a halt.

However, the proportion of people who cannot afford a healthy diet remains “extremely high”, said Maximo Torero, chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the report’s authors.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 report calculated the cost of a healthy diet is 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars a day. This means that in any given country, a healthy diet costs the amount of local currency with the same buying power that $4.28 has in the US.

“The extreme poverty line is $3PPP per person,” Torero said. “So it’s significantly higher.”