This month, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization released its 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. The report’s major focus was on the need to transform food systems for affordable and healthy diets – a challenge exacerbated in the COVID-19 environment. It says a preliminary assessment suggests the pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world in 2020.

The report reveals that an estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019, and that the nutritional status of the most vulnerable groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19. It points out that low-income countries rely more on staple foods and less on fruits and vegetables and animal source foods than high-income countries.

In an article in The Lancet journal, experts working to estimate the scale and reach of nutrition challenges related to COVID-19 say the pandemic will increase the risk of all forms of malnutrition, with intergenerational consequences to children’s growth and development, impacting human capital development.