Eating healthy is a privilege, not a choice, in Pakistan. The World Bank’s latest poverty line benchmark is set at $3.00 per person per day, entailing that anyone living on less than $3.00 is considered to be living in poverty.
Currently, 44 per cent of Pakistan’s population lives below this threshold, while the cost of a healthy diet stands at $3.95, making it unaffordable for nearly half the population. Adding on to this misfortune, since March 2022, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation has risen cumulatively by 63 per cent, significantly eroding household purchasing power. Thus, 60 per cent of Pakistan’s population is unable to afford a healthy diet.
But what exactly constitutes a healthy diet? According to Pakistan’s Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (2018), a healthy diet includes starchy staples, meat, pulses, eggs, fats, fruits, vegetables, milk and milk products. However, low income and high prices of staple items across these food groups have made maintaining such a diet unaffordable for many.
As of September 2025, food prices in Pakistan rose by a further 5.0 per cent. This translated into a sharp increase in the price of wheat flour, with the Consumer Price Index (urban/rural) rising by 13 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively, whereas the Wholesale Price Index increased by 12.32 per cent since last September.
With such persistent increases, wheat flour – once considered the most basic and accessible food item – is rapidly becoming unaffordable for low and middle-income households, forcing many to compromise on both quality and quantity of their daily meals.
Erratic policies and climate change are to blame for this price increase. In the 2025 season, the Punjab government neither procured wheat nor set a fixed support price, resulting in significant losses to farmers. This oversupply encouraged hoarding, and combined with devastating floods, wheat prices soared. It is estimated that a collective income loss of Rs2.2 trillion was incurred by small farmers, who make up almost 80 per cent of Pakistan’s farmers. This not only affected consumers’ purchasing power but also that of the farmers themselves.
In response, the government introduced the Wheat Policy 2025–2026, setting a support price of Rs3,500 per maund (40 kilograms) and allowing inter-provincial movement of wheat to ensure its availability across the country. However, while wheat continues to receive the government’s attention through policies, even if misaligned, other products, such as pulses, do not share the same fate.
Pulses are another prominent source of calories in a Pakistani diet. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics has shown a significant decrease in the Consumer Price Index (urban/rural) and Wholesale Price Index for pulses overall. However, this relief comes at a cost, $918 million was spent to import 1.32 million tons of pulses.
This growing dependence on imports stems from a steady decline in domestic cultivation since the 2000s, as a 35 per cent export tax has discouraged farmers from growing pulses in favour of other cash crops. As a result, local grain production fell by 16.6 per cent. But during such volatile geopolitical situations around the world, should we rely on imports for such a vital crop when we have the ideal climate and fertile land in regions like Rahim Yar Khan and Bhakkar?
Since pulses are a major source of plant-based protein, this growing dependence on imports also worsens protein insecurity among low-income households. This is especially true when meat has become increasingly unaffordable, with significant increases in CPI for both rural and urban areas – 12.34 per cent and 8.80 per cent, respectively – and a 12.3 per cent rise in wholesale prices. Adding to this concern, the government’s focus on expanding meat exports further risks reducing local supply and potentially leading to future price hikes.
Thus, with such volatility in prices, a healthy diet has been pushed to the background, making the mere attainment of food the primary concern. It is therefore imperative that our policies move away from blanket subsidies toward more targeted and efficient interventions that address the issue of the unaffordability of a healthy diet.
To ensure food security in Pakistan, policies for staple crops like wheat, rice and pulses must remain consistent with a focus on increasing local crop production capacity to protect consumers from external price vulnerabilities, along with streamlining procurement, storage and sales to eliminate corruption, elite capture and hoarding.
The writer is associated with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad. The views expressed by her are her own and do not necessarily reflect the organisation’s official stance.
