World’s most expensive healthy diet is in Latin America and the Caribbean, says UN

Maintaining a healthy diet in Latin America and the Caribbean is more expensive than in any other part of the world. While the average daily amount needed to maintain balanced meals in the region is US$ 3.98 per person (about R$ 20.7), the global average is US$ 3.54 (about R$ 18.4 ), which makes a nutritious diet unaffordable for 131 million people.

In Brazil, the cost is US$ 3.08 (about R$ 16 per day), below the global average, but remains unattainable for more than 40 million Brazilians, who cannot eat properly.

This is what the Regional Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security in Latin America and the Caribbean 2022 points out, a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), released this week.

According to the document, the higher cost of food in the region is due to the increase in international food prices, which occurred from 2020 and exacerbated after the start of the War in Ukraine, added to regional inflation, the increase in poverty and inequality and the reduction of public policies aimed at small farmers and family farming.

The indicator of the daily cost of an adequate diet, developed by FAO, identifies the lowest cost healthy food available in each location based on parameters of daily energy requirement (2,330 calories, at least) of nutritional recommendations for the consumption of fruits, vegetables, vegetables, proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

To determine economic access to this food basket, measured by the percentage and number of people unable to afford a healthy diet, the UN compares its cost with each country’s income distribution.

A healthy diet is considered unaffordable when its cost exceeds 52% of per capita income in each country.

“We are talking about the region with the most expensive healthy diet in the world, which particularly affects vulnerable populations, such as small farmers, rural women and indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, who allocate a greater percentage of their income to buying food,” he said. the regional director of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), Rossana Polastri.

“This cost increase is unequal between the subregions, and is driven by the Caribbean because of its dependence on the import of fruits, vegetables, legumes and essential proteins for a healthy diet, and which has been suffering the impact of the increase in oil prices since 2019”, explains Maya Takagi, Director of Programs for Latin America and the Caribbean at FAO.

Although Latin America and the Caribbean export 40% of their food production and represent 17% of the sector’s total world exports, the report points out that moderate and severe food insecurity (hunger) have increased in the region, which concentrates the greatest socioeconomic inequalities in the world. planet.

“The FAO has already concluded, since the 1980s, that the main cause of food insecurity is not the lack of available food, but the population’s lack of income to buy this food”, explains Takagi. “Latin America and the Caribbean has a very high number of poor people, with no income. When poverty increases, hunger and food insecurity increase.”

This dynamic has made the prevalence of food insecurity in the region higher than the global average. In 2021, according to the report, 40.6% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity (when people are hungry), which affects 29.3% of the planet’s population.

The number of people living with food insecurity or hunger in the region increased from 205.2 million in 2019 to 267.7 million in 2021. In South America, the increase in hunger was more pronounced, and the number of hungry people tripled since 2014, from 22 to 65.6 million.

These people are mostly women. And the gender gap in the region is more pronounced than in the rest of the world: 11.3 percentage points against 4.3 in the global average. This discrepancy, points out the UN document, highlights the need to include a gender perspective in social investment policies that deal with food security and malnutrition.

“The high cost of a healthy diet leads people to an unhealthy diet and that is, counterintuitively, leads to overweight and obesity”, explains sanitary doctor Ana Maria Segall, retired professor at Unicamp and researcher at Rede Penssan, which produces studies on food security in Brazil.

“The lack of access to adequate food leads to the option, as a survival strategy, of the consumption of ultra-processed foods, which are cheaper, high in calories and not very nutritious”, he says. The FAO report points out that there is an increase in overweight in children and obesity in adults in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Brazil, the percentage of obese adults grew from 14.5% in 2000 to 22.1% in 2016, points out the document.

“These conditions lead to a process of illness, with an increase in chronic and degenerative diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases that can lead to death”, says the doctor. “This is a cycle that starts with famine, which is the end point of lack of access to food.”