Three in four South Asians who cannot afford a healthy diet live in India.
Now, as India looks to fix malnutrition, it finds itself forced to tackle both undernutrition and growing levels of overnutrition as more and more of its people are classified as overweight.
Diet quality, already alarmingly bad, is only likely to have deteriorated in India during the pandemic and in the wake of rising food prices in recent months. UN data for 2020 estimated nearly a billion Indians were unable to purchase a wholesome, nourishing diet. And a recent study found more than two-thirds of India’s rural population could not afford a diet that met India’s own dietary guidelines. More than half of respondents in a December 2021-January 2022 survey said they ate fruits, flesh foods, eggs or milk fewer than two or three times a month, while four in five respondents said the nutritional quality of the food they consumed had deteriorated since the pandemic.
