The number of hungry people in the world increased to 828 million people in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, according to a United Nations report. These figures show that the world is not on track to achieve its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.

Despite global progress, trends in childhood malnutrition – including stunting and wasting, deficiencies in essential micronutrients, overweight and obesity – remain a major concern.

In 2021, the gender gap for food insecurity continued to widen, with 31.9 percent of the world's women found to be moderately or severely food-insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men. This gap of more than 4 percentage points increased from 3 percentage points in 2020.

In order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and guarantee the right to adequate food, sustainable diets must be physically and economically accessible to all without discrimination related to gender and other social variables such as age, ethnicity, religion, health and disability status

To overcome this situation, public policies are needed to address structural changes in the food environment. This means harmonizing fiscal measures, marketing and marketing regulations, mandatory front-of-pack labelling, incentives to encourage sustainable and healthy food production and short supply chains, together with food and nutrition education programmes. To address existing challenges in agrifood systems, we must strengthen coordination between public policies and broaden the range of interventions to help different types of food producers (mainly family farmers) and consumers. Special efforts are needed to close the gender gap and reduce all forms of inequality