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A new indicator on Minimum Dietary Diversity has been adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission. This indicator on Minimum Dietary Diversity (MDD) would help track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 2 on zero hunger—one of the 17 goals under the 2030 Agenda.
MDD represents the variety of foods that we consume and is important as the quality of our diet is essential for health, growth, development, and well-being. Under this indicator, intake of 10 food groups—grains; white roots and tubers, and plantains; pulses (beans, peas and lentils); nuts and seeds; milk and milk products; meat, poultry and fish; eggs; dark green leafy vegetables; other vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables; other vegetables; and other fruits—over 24 hours would be monitored in sample populations.
Overall, it ensures that focus is not only on calorie consumption but on eating good and nutritious foods.
This indicator adds to the nearly 250 indicators that are already monitored under the global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2017. These indicators were reviewed comprehensively over the last one year by a coalition of countries and international organizations led by Switzerland, along with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The new indicator was then adopted at the 56th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission held in New York between March 4 and March 7, 2025.
“The absence of an SDG indicator on healthy diets neglected the pivotal role that diets play in achieving the 2030 Agenda, even though unhealthy dietary patterns are known to be the primary driver of poor health outcomes and non-communicable diseases globally,” said José Rosero Moncayo, FAO’s Chief Statistician and Director of the Statistics Division. The indicator provides a tool for formulating evidence-based strategies for enhancing nutrition and health outcomes through diet-related interventions and therefore achieving SDG 2, he said.
The indicator would be managed jointly by FAO and UNICEF and measured in two population groups: children and women of reproductive age.
These organisations have advocated dietary diversity for long as diets that lack diversity increase the risk of micronutrient deficiencies, particularly among children and women, which can compromise health and physical and cognitive development. They say that no single food or food group provides the multitude of nutrients and other bioactive compounds necessary for optimal nutrition, growth and long-term health.
MDD is a yes/no indicator of whether women and children have consumed at least five out of 10 defined food groups in the previous 24 hours. The higher the proportion of people in the sample who reach this threshold, the higher the chance that women and children in the population consume diets that have sufficient vitamins and minerals.
Many countries already collect data on MDD and this is used to inform policy and programs. Integrating the “prevalence of minimum dietary diversity” into the SDG indicator framework would help countries to benchmark their progress on healthy diets. This also elevates the importance of healthy diets as a central ambition for food systems transformation and improves the chances of it being included in diet monitoring in the post-SDG era.