The 2022 Panorama of Food and Nutrition Security report of the United Nations Organization (UN) revealed that 22.5% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean do not have sufficient means to access a healthy diet, that is, say, about 131 million people. In the Caribbean, 52% of the population has been affected by this situation; in Mesoamerica this number reaches 27.8% and in South America 18.4%.
the publication reports that 131.3 million people in the region could not afford a healthy diet in 2020. This represents an increase of 8 million compared to 2019, and is due to the higher average daily cost of this type of diet in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to the rest of the world regions, reaching a value of $4.2 dollars in the Caribbean, followed by South America and Mesoamerica with $3.6 and $3.4 dollars respectively.
According to the publication, this phenomenon is associated with different socioeconomic and nutritional indicators: income level of a country, the incidence of poverty and the level of inequality, are some of the variables.
The socioeconomic panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean is not encouraging; The most affected population groups are children under 5 years of age and women, since they suffer a higher prevalence of food insecurity than men.
“No single policy can provide the solution to this problem. It is necessary to strengthen national and regional coordination mechanisms to respond to hunger and malnutrition”, said Mario Lubetkin, deputy director and regional representative of FAO for Latin America and the Caribbean.
To the above, he adds that: “To contribute to the affordability of healthy diets, it is necessary to create incentives for the diversification of the production of nutritious foods aimed mainly at family farming and small-scale producers, measures for price transparency of these foods in markets and commerce, cash transfers and other actions such as improving school menus”, concluded Lubetkin.
Between 2019 and 2021, the number of hungry people in the region increased by 13.2 million, reaching a total of 56.5 million hungry people in 2021, a situation that was also affected by the impact of the pandemic caused by COVID -19. An increase led by South America, where an additional 11 million people suffered from hunger. Between 2019 and 2021, hunger reached a prevalence of 7.9% in South America, 8.4% in Mesoamerica, and 16.4% in the Caribbean.
Regarding moderate or severe food insecurity, in 2021 40.6% of the regional population experienced this situation, compared to 29.3% of the population globally. Severe food insecurity is also more frequent in the region (14.2%) than in the world (11.7%).
Other figures presented in the report indicate that the region registers an important evolution regarding the prevalence of chronic malnutrition in children under 5 years of age. In 2020, this figure was 11.3% in Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 10 percentage points below the world average. However, 3.9 million children up to 5 years of age are overweight.