Food insecurity: Nutrition and geography in a hungry world – DW – 07/28/2025

DW

5 days ago

More than 2.3 billion people experience moderate or severe food insecurity, and 673.2 million are undernourished, according to a global report by UN agencies. DW examines hunger and unequal food access over the years
More than 2.3 billion people across the globe face moderate to severe food insecurity, and 673.2 million are undernourished, according to the 2025 "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World" report, released Monday by six UN agencies and led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Since 2022, food insecurity and hunger have been dropping slowly throughout the world. However, more people are now unable to afford healthy food than before — that is, they might be eating enough calories, but the overall quality of their diets decreased. According to the report, this is happening as the price of food is rising worldwide, often outpacing the inflation rate of other types of products.
These five charts give an overview of how this trend changed over time, how unequal access is around the world and how poverty remains an obstacle to a basic necessity: food.
The FAO defines undernourishment as lacking access to enough food to meet the daily calorie minimum to maintain an active and healthy life — that is, an undernourished person faces chronic hunger.
Worldwide, there was a downward trend in the prevalence of undernourishment from 2000 to 2019, but it rose sharply with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic and declined slowly for the five years since, still remaining above pre-pandemic levels — but the recovery gained pace from 2023 to 2024.
According to the report, this happened as the lasting economic impacts of the pandemic were combined with an increase in food prices, wars and extreme weather events — which disproportionately affect people who were already in a vulnerable position.
The more positive global trends mask stark regional inequalities. In Africa, for example, hunger was already on the rise even before the pandemic. The continent is now close to the same levels of undernourishment that it had in 2002. Currently, one in five people across Africa are undernourished.
Latin America and Asia, on the other hand, have made important advances in fighting hunger over the past 25 years.
The reality of these regions shows a stark contrast with Europe and North America, which have had undernourishment levels consistently under 2.5% over the past 25 years.
More than 2.3 billion people around the world experience moderate to severe levels of food insecurity — which covers the quality, quantity and variety of available food. In cases of severe food insecurity, people may go for entire days without eating.
Most people who face moderate to severe food insecurity live in Asia (1.1 billion), but the highest prevalence is in Africa (57.9% of the continent's population). In contrast to undernourishment, such levels of food insecurity are also noticeable in Europe and North America, where 8.4% of the population is moderately to severely food insecure.
Globally, women are more affected by food insecurity than men. According to the report, this happens because of gender norms and pressures that often limit women's access to resources. Women, for example, often have lower earnings — which makes paying for food harder in a context of food prices rising globally.
This gender gap, although global, is also unevenly distributed. It's at its highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, where it reaches about 6 percentage points. On other continents, the gap ranges from 1 to 2 percentage points.
The inability to afford nutritious food is often a major driver of food insecurity. According to FAO, 31.9% of the world's population can't afford to eat healthy — that is, they lack the economic means to afford a diverse and balanced diet that provides all the required nutrients and includes different food groups, with moderate consumption of products that might be detrimental to health, like ultraprocessed foods.
There are people unable to pay for food everywhere in the world, but, as with the other indicators, deep inequality persists. In some African countries, such as South Sudan and Madagascar, more than 90% of the population can't afford a healthy diet. In countries such as Germany, for example, this share is around 2%.