Home | Monitoring the cost and affordability of healthy diets for policy action | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Making healthy diets more affordable is a priority for people around the world. Each day, about one out of three people struggles to access food that will meet their nutritional needs. FAO has focused attention and action on this problem by providing statistics on the Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diet (CoAHD) at the global level. This new initiative now aims to strengthen national capacity to track these statistics at country level and integrate them into evidence-based recommendations on optimal public policies and investments to improve the affordability of healthy diets.

In a nutshell

This new, FAO-led project supports selected countries in monitoring the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD), equipping governments with the data needed to take policy action to reduce costs and improve access to healthy diets for their populations.

The project has two focus areas. First, FAO will work with national research institutes in 10 countries to establish their own systems to calculate and regularly report on CoAHD using food price and income data. Then, In four countries, FAO will work with national technical institutions and policy partners to leverage CoAHD data and FAO's Policy Optimization Tool (PolOpT) to identify how public spending can be optimally allocated across agrifood policy interventions and value chains to make healthy diets more affordable while also maintaining fiscal discipline and advancing other broader development goals.

Events

25/5

2026

Rome Nutrition Week 2026 | Connecting the Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diets to Agrifood System Investment Decisions

25/05/2026

On 25 May 2026, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hosted a thematic session during Rome Nutrition Week exploring how the Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diets (CoAHD)

10/2

2026

Making healthy diets more affordable: moving forward to support countries

10/02/2026

FAO organized a webinar marking a new phase of work to support countries in monitoring and using the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD) for policy action. This webinar introduced FAO’s new and existing work on CoAHD, highlighting years of partnership with country governments and partner institutions. The webinar outlined FAO’s new ...