Food prices change the diet

The people of the world from rich to poor are gradually changing their eating habits due to food price increases in the past few years, a survey said.

Oxfam summed up that among the countries participating in the study, many people changed their eating habits in the last two years: 39% for food price increases, 33% for health reasons.

Rising food prices have also led to changes in the spending habits and living of people in developing countries , CNN said.

Adolreza Abbassian, an economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said: " People in poor countries are already eating only once a day. So when food prices rise, they must Spending all the income into food, increasing family income is impossible, so the only way is to eat less or eat lower quality food . "

Tunisian people protested against rising food and unemployment prices last December. Photo: CNN

In Kenya, 76% of respondents reported changing their diets in the last few years. Among them, 79% change is because food prices are increasing. Mexico has a similar situation: 65% of diet changes with more than 50% are due to price. Although food price increases are currently the most influential for developing countries, Western countries are also inevitable. In the US, 55% of diet changes with 31% are due to food prices.

After nearly 30 years of stabilizing prices, foods such as barley, meat and sugar suddenly increased in price since the middle of 2008. Experts say that this is the result of abnormal weather changes, gasoline price increases. oil and economic strategy lack vision.

In February this year, the United Nations food and foodstuff price index (including the prices of five basic foods: meat, barley, .) reached a new level of 238, nearly 20% higher than This index in the food crisis in 2008.

According to World Bank data, an additional 44 million people worldwide have suffered from food shortages since June 2010. Previously, 1.2 billion people worldwide had to live under The average is 1.25 USD per day.

" Although for people in poor countries, the current food prices can be considered very high, for people in developed countries, they continue to buy food despite the price increase. Dangerous thing. from this action is that they continue to buy will make prices continue to rise in no way reduced. As a result, people in poor countries will again be unable to afford new food prices , "Abbassian commented. .

Currently, food prices around the world are pushing many people into poverty, the only way out is to provide and support food prices for people living below the poverty levels of countries and organizations. non-governmental.

The Agriculture Ministers of the G20 will have a meeting in Paris next week to discuss the recent surge in prices without stopping in order to find a common solution.