Global Poverty, Food Markets, and Healthy Nutrition

Efforts to improve global nutrition often run up against an inescapable truth: poverty, more than preference, limits healthy food choices. Two new studies highlight the complexity of this challenge and suggest that simply making nutritious foods more available or promoting dietary change isn’t enough – especially for the world’s poorest communities.

Healthy Nutrition Out of Reach

A recent study in Food Policy study by Jonas Stehl and colleagues evaluated the affordability of healthy diets across the world, revealing that for almost three billion people, a nutritionally adequate diet remains economically out of reach. Their analysis shows that even the most basic, nutrient-rich foods cost more than the poorest households can afford. This creates a structural barrier to improving global nutrition, especially in regions already experiencing high food insecurity.

Complementing this, a study in Nature Food by Tailane Scapin and colleagues assessed the dynamics of global food retail environments. They found a retail environment dominated by large chains that drives a relative decrease in availability of healthy food. With these dynamics they observed a rising obesity prevalence. Large retail chains often favor calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products because they are cheaper to produce and distribute. This imbalance, driven by economic incentives and supply chains focused on volume rather than quality, reinforces unhealthy diets – particularly among poorer individuals.

Sustainable Goals

Together, these findings echo the urgency behind the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN tells us:

“The second of the UN’s 17 SDGs is to ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.’ Achieving this goal by the target date of 2030 will require a profound change of the global food and agriculture system.”

Transformation

The real goal must be nutrition security and it requires more than just a supply of food. It requires nourishing food. As these studies demonstrate, addressing global malnutrition will take more than just increasing the food supply. Transforming food systems to make nutritious diets both accessible and affordable is necessary.

The transformation won’t come easily. It demands coordinated policy reforms, targeted subsidies, and investment in local markets that can sustainably produce diverse, healthy foods. It also means rethinking the role of food assistance programs, not just in terms of quantity, but quality.

Nutrition equity cannot be separated from economic justice. Without tackling poverty head-on, global goals for healthy nutrition will remain aspirational. As these studies make clear, food markets reflect the inequalities of the broader world – and until we address that, healthy nutrition will remain a luxury for some, rather than a human right for all.

Click here for the study in Food Policy and here for the study in Nature Food. For more on UN goals for sustainable food systems and nutrition security, click here.

Atlas Holding Up the Celestial Globe, painting by Guercino / WikiArt

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April 7, 2025