(5 July 2007) New research by Save the Children UK has revealed that in order to feed their family a healthy diet the world's poorest people are facing food costs that are more than three times their income. The charity's latest report, Running on Empty, measured for the first time just how wide the gap is between the price of feeding a family enough nutritious food to be healthy and how much people in developing countries can hope to earn.

The research, carried out in four locations in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Tanzania, showed that between 15 (in Ethiopia) and 79 (in Bangladesh) per cent of households simply couldn't afford to feed their children a healthy diet. The estimated cost of a healthy diet for the poorest in the study locations in the four countries would be like an average household in the UK facing a weekly shopping bill of up to £1,700. The comparative cost of the diet compared with the equivalent average weekly earnings in the UK, was:

• Bangladesh £1,704 a week
• Ethiopia £677 a week
• Myanmar £584 a week
• Tanzania £593 a week

Costanza de Toma, Save the Children's UK's Hunger advocacy advisor, said: "The poorest families simply do not have the money to afford to ever feed their children enough good food for them to grow up healthy and strong. Poverty has condemned them to a hand to mouth existence and their children to a future of stunting or early death. In 2000, world leaders promised to halve the proportion of hungry children in the world - but they are failing to deliver."

Chronic malnutrition is responsible for 5.6 million child deaths a year. Millions more children around the world will be stunted because of this persistent hunger, which will affect their entire lives - they will be less well developed both mentally and physically, more prone to disease, and when they reach adulthood will be weaker and less able to do manual work. Poverty is the underlying cause beneath this silent emergency.

Save the Children UK believes that one of the best ways to tackle chronic child malnutrition and meet the first Millennium Development Goal is to provide regular cash benefits, like social security benefit or child benefits, to the poorest families as it has proven to be one of the most effective ways to tackle malnutrition. The charity is calling for national governments, DFID and the governments of other G8 countries to support cash benefit schemes.

Costanza de Toma said: " Food aid can be a blunt tool for tackling chronic malnutrition. Putting cash, rather than food, directly into people's hands means they can buy what they need, not take what they are given. Save the Children is already doing this and we know it works - it is an effective and efficient way to beat child hunger."

-Ends-

Notes to Editors

Running on Empty briefing (143 kb)

• For more information or a copy of the report please contact: Kathryn Rawe in Save the Children UK's Press Office on +44 (0)20 7012 6844 or email k.rawe@savethechildren.org.uk
• The comparative cost of a healthy diet figure was found by comparing the price of buying enough food to feed a family in the research country a healthy diet with the average earnings of the poorest families. We multiplied the average weekly earnings of a household in the UK (£533 - DfWP 2006) by this ratio to create the equivalent figure in terms of the average UK family.
• Data comes from Save the Children UK's report, The Minimum Cost of a Healthy Diet: Findings from piloting a new methodology in four study locations. Detailed methodology and error margins are included in this report which is available from the press office on request.