Is Healthy and Sustainable Eating Accessible to Everyone?

The problem is not only hunger, but economic access to healthy food

The 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World estimates that about 645 million people faced hunger in 2025. A broader measure reveals an even larger challenge: around 2.7 billion people could not afford a healthy diet made up of safe, diverse, nutritious foods. The difference matters. Access to enough calories is not the same as access to a high-quality diet that meets nutritional needs.

Food price alone is not a complete explanation. Affordability describes the relationship between prices, income, and essential non-food spending. The same basket of vegetables can have the same shelf price for two households, yet become very different in real accessibility once rent, energy, transport, health costs, and income security are considered. Framing healthy eating only as a shopping list or motivation problem therefore hides structural barriers.

A healthy sustainable diet is more than a lower carbon footprint

FAO and WHO describe healthy sustainable diets as patterns that support health and well-being, have low environmental pressure, and are accessible, affordable, safe, equitable, and culturally acceptable. An approach that lowers environmental impact while overlooking nutritional adequacy, culture, or economic access is therefore incomplete by definition.

The 2025 EAT–Lancet Commission similarly moved beyond a planetary-health plate alone to consider healthy, sustainable, and just food systems together. ‘Just’ is not an optional extra: who bears transition costs, how producers are protected, and who can access nutritious food are part of the health and environmental challenge.

Is sustainable eating always more expensive?

There is no universal answer. A modelling study across 150 countries found that healthy sustainable patterns rich in plant foods could cost less than prevailing diets in high- and upper-middle-income settings. Replacing some meat and other higher-cost animal foods with pulses, whole grains, and other plant sources contributes to this difference. In low-income settings, however, the challenge is often not replacing an expensive current diet but the fact that the absolute minimum cost of a healthy diet already exceeds household resources.

A 2025 Nature Food analysis estimated the 2021 average cost of the least-expensive global Healthy Diet Basket at US$3.68 PPP per person per day. Fruits and vegetables made up about 40% of basket cost and animal-source foods about 28%. This is a price floor based on the cheapest local foods that meet guidelines—not the full real-life cost of brand preferences, meals away from home, preparation time, or transport.

Both ‘plant-based is cheap’ and ‘sustainable eating is expensive’ are therefore misleading as absolutes. Results depend on national income, local production, seasonality, supply chains, food waste, and the diet being replaced. A separate 2025 global modelling study also suggested gains in diet quality and environmental outcomes while warning that affordability and water-use burdens require careful management in some emerging and developing economies.

What can make the transition more accessible in daily life?

Sustainable eating does not require exotic products, expensive supplements, or one perfect menu. A practical starting point is to strengthen nutritious foods that already belong to local food culture. Combining pulses with grains and vegetables; comparing seasonal, frozen, or appropriately preserved options; planning and storing edible food well; and reconsidering the frequency and portion size of higher-cost animal foods can help in many households.

These strategies will not work equally for everyone. ‘Cook at home’ is not a sufficient solution for someone with long working hours, no kitchen or refrigeration, a distant market reached by public transport, or a therapeutic diet. Appropriate nutrition advice treats budget, time, equipment, transport, and health status as starting data rather than afterthoughts.

What is needed when individual advice is not enough?

Food environments must make healthy choices easier and less costly. School and workplace meals, public food procurement, neighborhood retail, cold-chain and storage infrastructure, smallholder market access, and social protection all shape what reaches the plate. Reducing food loss and logistics costs can improve access, particularly for perishable fruits, vegetables, and animal-source foods.

WHO guidance on fiscal policy notes that education alone has limited reach where energy-dense, nutrient-poor products are cheap and heavily marketed. Options include well-designed subsidies for fruits, vegetables, and other foods that support healthy diets; appropriate taxes; and directing revenues toward healthier access. Such policies must be designed not to increase burdens on low-income households and must be monitored in local context.

Crucially, progress should not be measured only through sales or carbon metrics. The cost of a healthy diet, the share of people unable to afford it, access among groups such as women and children, producer income, and working conditions should be monitored together. If an environmental goal widens inequality—or a nutrition goal exhausts the production system—the solution is not yet sustainable.