MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The Dutch beat French and Swiss in healthy affordable diet, says Oxfam

The new index looks at whether people have enough to eat, food quality affordability, and dietary health

The Netherlands is No. 1 in the world for having the most plentiful, nutritious, healthy and affordable diet, beating France and Switzerland into second place. Chad is last in 125th spot behind Ethiopia and Angola, according to a new food database by worldwide development organization Oxfam.

 European countries occupy the entire top 20 bar one – Australia ties in 8th place – while the US, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil and Canada all fall outside. African countries occupy the bottom 30 places in the table except for four – Laos, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India are there too.

Oxfam’s “Good Enough to Eat” index compares 125 countries where full data is available to create a snapshot of the different challenges people face in getting food. Oxfam’s GROW campaign is calling for urgent reform to the way food is produced and distributed around the world to end the scandal of one in eight people going hungry despite there being enough to feed everyone.

The new index looks at whether people have enough to eat, food quality, affordability, and dietary health.

On affordability, the UK is among the worst performers in Western Europe, sharing 20th position with Cyprus. Food in Guinea, The Gambia, Chad and Iran costs people two-and-a-half times more than other consumer goods, making those the most expensive countries for citizens to buy food.

The price of food in the US is relatively the cheapest and most stable in the world. Angola and Zimbabwe suffer from the most volatile food prices, researchers found. The countries whose citizens struggle for enough food, with the worst rates of malnourishment and underweight children, are Burundi, Yemen, Madagascar and India.

On the other side of the table, Cambodia and Burundi are countries that score better by having among the lowest levels of obesity and diabetes in the world, while US, Mexico, Fiji, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia score most poorly with high rates of obesity and diabetes.

Iceland scores a perfect mark for the quality of its food, in terms of nutritional diversity and safe water. Iceland’s obesity and diabetes levels push it down the table, to 13th spot. Similarly, unhealthy eating pushes the US down to 21st place. The real drivers of hunger Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said:

“This index lays bare the common concerns that people have with food regardless of where they come from. It reveals how the world is failing to ensure that everyone is able to eat healthily, despite there being enough to go around”, said Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima.

“Poverty and inequality are the real drivers of hunger. Hunger happens where governance is poor, distribution weak, when markets fail, and when people don’t have enough money and resources to buy all the goods and services they need,” she said.

“Having sufficient healthy and affordable food is not something that much of the world enjoys.”

Oxfam’s GROW campaign is calling for more investment in small-holder agriculture and better infrastructure to boost crop production, prevent waste and improve access to markets. It wants an end to bio-fuels targets, which are diverting food from hungry people to fuel tanks, action to tackle climate change, better regulation of food commodities markets to prevent food price hikes and improved land rights so people do not lose the land they rely upon to grow food.