The health and environmental damage caused by food production costs the world $10 trillion a year, or 10% of global GDP, the UN says.
Conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, the result of poor nutrition, are responsible for $7.3 trillion, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which in its annual report put a “price tag” on the hidden costs of the global food industry. report, published Monday.
“In recent years, people have realized that the planet’s boundaries have been strained and in many cases exceeded,” said David Laborde, director of the FAO Division for Agricultural and Food Economics.
“While food is central to our lives, it also has a significant impact on the environment and health,” he said. “Assigning a value is a way to quantify these different impacts.”
But he added: “We shouldn’t just approach this debate through a high-income lens. In the Global North, ecosystems and unhealthy diets have long been discussed in public debate, but the costs of poverty and malnutrition have been overlooked.”
The report states that current food systems are increasing poverty in low-income countries. Many farmers in poorer countries did not fully benefit from the value of their products because they often resold their crops to traders and manufacturers, who made the profit, the report said. This left farmers unable to afford nutritious diets.
“For example, in Uganda, the hidden costs of the agricultural system amount to 20% of GDP; 70% of that is related to poverty,” said Laborde.
The FAO director said he expected financial burdens to rise in coming years as countries became richer and ultra-processed foods, sugar and fats became a larger part of the diet.
“Twenty years ago, hunger and malnutrition were still common in many of today’s middle-income countries,” Laborde said. “Today we know that if you didn’t have enough to eat growing up, you become more susceptible to diet-related diseases as an adult.”
A 2020 British Medical Journal study found that experiencing severe malnutrition or famine as a child increased the risk of cardiovascular disease, impaired glucose metabolism and metabolic syndrome (a cluster of medical conditions – such as obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar) later in life, heart disease, stroke and diabetes type 2).
Laborde called this combination of overnutrition (obesity) and undernutrition (deprivation) “a double burden of malnutrition”and added: “High-income countries don’t have these kinds of problems.
“So in fact, unhealthy eating habits may become even more problematic for middle-income countries than in high-income countries,” he said.
“If we want middle-income countries not to follow the trajectory of other rich economies, they must put the issue of healthy diet center stage and focus on prevention. Because once someone gets diabetes, he or she can’t go back.”
These non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have traditionally been considered a problem specific to the Global North, while public health policies in the Global South have focused on preventing infectious diseases, such as HIV. But today 74% of deaths worldwide are caused by Non-communicable diseases and 77% of these occur in low and middle-income countries.
Liz Arnanz, from NCD Alliancea global organization that fights these diseases said: “Unhealthy products are killing industries.
“Growing economies are seen as new markets for these industries; often they are attracted by a lack of regulations or a lack of capacity to enforce regulations. For example, right now we see that the alcohol industry is very aggressively targeting African countries.”
But many middle-income countries are responding proactively to the growing threat of unhealthy food and products. In Latin America, NCDs are responsible for 70-85% of deaths, but the region has become a world leader in implementing preventive policies, Arnanz said.
“Just this week, Colombia started imposing taxes not only on sugary drinks, but also on junk food,” she added. Noting that this was a more robust position than that of many wealthy countries, Arnanz said the availability of healthy and nutritious food was not a matter of personal choice but of political policy.
Laborde said there is no one-size-fits-all solution to reducing the health and environmental costs of food production.
“We can’t just raise the price of food and hope the market will solve the problems,” he said. “For example, if we simply raise the price of steak to reflect some of the hidden costs associated with its production, it won’t be the rich people who reduce their meat consumption.
“The solutions are more versatile; in some cases it concerns education, in others it concerns school feeding programs. We can do a lot, but not if we oversimplify it.”
The FAO plans to outline solutions to improve global health next year.