The cost of eating is squeezing the poorest - from the grocery aisle to the food-stamp card

Food & Farming 4 min 80 sources

A UN report says one in three people can't afford a healthy diet, US grocery prices logged their biggest jump in 50 years, and 7.4m UK households are going without essentials. The same food-price rise lands hardest on those who spend the biggest share of their money on food.

Key takeaways

A UN report says one in three people - 2.69 billion - can't afford a healthy diet, even as global hunger falls for a third straight year.
The same food-price rise hits the poor hardest, because food is a far bigger share of their budget - grocery inflation works like a tax on those with the least.
As prices climb, safety nets are thinning: US food-stamp enrolment is contracting and a long-running nutrition-education program is being cut.

The week’s loudest food story wasn’t a crop or a commodity. It was the bill at the till. Three separate reports landed on the same problem from different corners of the world: eating well is getting harder for the people with the least.

The squeeze, measured three ways

A new report from five United Nations agencies landed the headline figure. Its yearly State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World found that 2.69 billion people, roughly one in three, cannot afford a healthy diet [19]. The report priced a healthy diet at 4.28 “purchasing power parity” dollars a day - the local-currency amount that buys what $4.28 buys in the US [19]. The extreme-poverty line is $3 a day [19]. So for the poorest, a good diet costs more than they have to spend on everything.

There was real progress underneath the alarm. Global hunger fell for a third straight year, to 7.8% of people in 2025 from 8.1% in 2024, and a long rise in Africa looks to be levelling off [19]. Fewer people are starving. But eating well - fruit, vegetables, dairy, protein, not just cheap calories - is slipping out of reach.

In the US, shoppers are rewiring their routines while digesting the biggest grocery-price jump in 50 years [2]. In the UK, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found a record 62% of low-income families went without an essential - heating, clothes, or food - in the past six months [27]. That is about 7.4 million households, up from 7.1 million a year ago [27]. Almost half had skipped a meal or cut portions to save money [27]. UK food inflation actually eased slightly in June, with sugar and chocolate falling [29] - but for a household already cutting meals, a slower rise is still a rise.

Why the same price rise isn’t the same for everyone

Here is the mechanism under all three stories. Food is a much bigger slice of a poor household’s budget than a rich one’s. A well-off family might spend a tenth of its income on food; for a family near the poverty line it can be a third or more. So when prices climb the same percentage for everyone, the poorer household loses a far larger share of what it has to live on. A food-price rise is, in effect, a tax that falls hardest on those who can least absorb it.

That’s also why governments reach for the cheapest calories first. The UN’s chief economist on the report, Maximo Torero, noted that policies have long subsidised cereals and starchy staples rather than meat, dairy, fruit, and vegetables. “That means calories, but not a diversity of diet,” he said [19]. Cheap starch fills a tight budget. It doesn’t feed it well. One visible result: adult obesity rose from 12.1% in 2012 to 16.2% in 2024, as diets tilt toward cheap, filling, less nourishing food [19].

What’s actually pushing prices

Behind the shelf, the usual machinery is grinding. Grain markets firmed this week - corn rose more than 8 cents and soybeans jumped 21 cents on separate days [4][14] - even as forecasters warned of trouble ahead. Rabobank expects Brazil’s next soybean crop to fall as its 20-year expansion pauses [7], and one analysis warned American farmers could see deeper losses in 2027 [16]. Drought is the throughline. Extreme heat is “sucking soils dry” across Europe [5], and a North Dakota farmer compared this year’s dryness to the punishing 2017 season [12]. The African Development Bank warned Africa faces a $10 to $20 billion hit from a “super” El Nino [32].

Two everyday treats show the squeeze in miniature. Coffee climbed from $2.76 to $3.48 a pound on a wave of trading and El Nino worry [18]. Cocoa costs pushed the chocolatier Lindt’s shares down from CHF 13,550 to CHF 9,685 over a year [34]. Investors are asking how long shoppers will pay premium prices before switching to smaller packs [34].

The safety net is thinning

As prices bite, the support underneath is being pulled back. In the US, President Trump’s overhaul of food stamps - the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP - is “beginning to bite,” in the Economist’s phrase [70]. Retailers report the “SNAP footprint is contracting,” with enrolment and spending down; shoppers on benefits are shifting from convenience foods toward fresh produce and meal basics that stretch further [22]. And SNAP-Ed, a decades-old program that funded cooking classes and farmers markets in low-income neighbourhoods, is being wound down within weeks [28]. Nutrition experts called the cut baffling amid rising prices and the same administration’s push for healthier eating [28].

The quieter story

The under-covered thread ties it together: it isn’t only quantity that’s slipping, but quality. Researchers point to a slow decline in the nutrients in staple crops and ask whether farming methods can reverse it [53]. And a study found that a healthier, more plant-forward global diet could cut farm emissions by up to 85% [59]. What we can afford to eat, how it’s grown, and what it does to the planet are one connected problem, not three.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

Why the grocery bill is a quiet tax on the poor

The less you earn, the bigger the share of your money that goes on food - so the same price rise takes far more of what you have.

One rise, two different burdens

A shopping trip costs a bit more this month. For a comfortable family, that is an annoyance - food is maybe a tenth of what they spend, so a jump in prices trims a small corner of the budget. For a family near the bottom, food can be a third of their spending or more. The same rise, on the same tins and loaves, lands as something else entirely: a skipped meal, a smaller portion, the oven left off.

That gap is the whole story behind this week’s numbers. The United States logged its biggest grocery-price jump in half a century. In Britain, millions of low-income households are going without heating, clothes, or food, and nearly half have skipped a meal to save money. A single price rise, felt as a shrug in one home and a hungry evening in another.

The law behind it

There is a name for this, and it is one of the oldest reliable findings in economics. In 1857 a German statistician, Ernst Engel, noticed a pattern. As a household’s income goes up, the share of its budget spent on food goes down - even though the amount can rise. A richer family buys nicer food and more of it, yet food shrinks as a slice of the whole. So much of the new money goes to things food doesn’t compete with: travel, savings, a bigger home.

Read it the other way and it becomes a lens. The poorer you are, the bigger the share of every pound that food already claims. Food-share is a rough thermometer of income, pointing the opposite way: high share, low income.

Why a necessity is a shock that finds the poor

Food is not optional. You cannot wait for the sale or do without for a month. That is exactly what makes a food-price rise behave like a tax - and a tax that takes a bigger cut from smaller budgets. Say the shelf price climbs the same percentage for everyone. The household spending a third of its income on food loses far more of what it has to live on than the one spending a tenth.

The same shape holds for anything you can’t skip. Energy, rent, the bus to work - each is a bigger share of a small budget, so each rise presses hardest on the people with the least room. This is why a calm national figure can hide a hard reality. When a country says “food inflation is easing,” it is reporting an average across every household at once. The average treats a banker and a pensioner as the same shopper. They are not.

The shape underneath: cheap calories by design

Here is a choice hiding inside what looks like plain policy. For decades, governments have mostly subsidised cereals and starchy staples - the cheapest calories - rather than fruit, vegetables, dairy, and meat. The UN’s chief economist put it plainly this week: that buys calories, but not a varied diet.

It is a defensible choice. Cheap starch is what fits a tight budget, and it keeps people fed; hunger has fallen three years running. But it also tilts the cheapest diets toward filling, less nourishing food, and adult obesity has climbed as a result. The arrangement helps the people under it and shapes them at the same time - both are true. What looks like neutral nutrition policy is really an answer to Engel’s law: feed the tight budget first, worry about the diet second. Worth asking, on any “natural” price or subsidy: who set it, and who does it serve?

Who is inside this

You are somewhere on this curve, and so is everyone you know. If this month’s grocery jump was a shrug for you, that shrug is Engel’s law working in your favour - a small food-share, bought by a bigger income. One rung down, the identical rise arrives as a missed dinner. The number is the same; the burden is not.

The law runs all the way up. As a whole country grows richer, farming shrinks as a share of its economy. That is why shoppers in wealthy places can go years without a thought for the field their food came from. The distance between the plate and the farm is itself a measure of wealth.

None of us sees the whole of it. The shopper feels their own till, not the 2.69 billion people who cannot afford a good diet. The minister sees a national average, not the pensioner rationing the oven. The trader sees a coffee contract, not the family that drops the jar. Each seat holds one true, partial view. The price on the shelf is real - but what it costs is a different number for every person who reaches for it.

03 · Lab · your turn

Three Different Plates

Push one grocery-price rise across three household budgets and feel how the same percentage lands hardest on whoever spends the biggest share on food.

04 · Hope · carry this

Even in a hard year for grocery bills, global hunger fell for the third year running - proof that when people decide feeding each other is the goal, the numbers can bend the right way.