From Potential to Prosperity: Why Nutrition Is Still Pakistan’s Best Investment

Every dollar invested in nutrition returns twenty-three dollars in economic returns, and that return is highest when the investment is made early, from conception to two years of age, when the brain and body grow faster than at any other time in life. This is not an abstract economic theory. It is visible in children who grow well, stay healthier, stay in school longer, and grow into productive adults, and it is visible in the opposite direction as well, in the cost of doing nothing, which is now projected to cost the world $41 trillion over the next ten years. Malnutrition still contributes to nearly half of all deaths among children under five and one in five maternal deaths, robbing children of their potential and nations of their future by impairing cognitive development and locking families into cycles of poverty that can last for generations.

Pakistan’s hunger in numbers

In Pakistan, that global warning has become a very local emergency. For years the country quoted the figure that nearly 40 percent of children under five are stunted, rising to 50 percent in the poorest quintile, and that stunting means a child is too short for their age because of prolonged inadequate nutrition, with consequences that are largely irreversible. The newest data does not bring relief; it brings sharper clarity. In the Global Hunger Index 2026, released in October 2026, Pakistan ranked 106th out of 122 countries with a score of 25.5, placing it in the serious hunger category and second-worst in South Asia after only Afghanistan. According to that index, 16.1 percent of Pakistan’s population is undernourished, 33.6 percent of children under five are stunted, 9.8 percent are wasted, and the under-five mortality rate stands at 5.6 percent. The same report notes that while Pakistan has improved from a score of 36.2 in 2000, the hunger level remains serious, and the IMF has projected inflation at 9.9 percent for FY2026-27, which means the cost of a nutritious diet is moving further away from the families who need it most.

When floods deepen hunger

These risks are now compounded by a new layer of crisis that was not just a one-time flood. The monsoon floods of 2025 affected more than six million people, displaced 2.5 million, and killed nearly 1,000 people including 250 children, while submerging more than 2.2 million hectares of cropland in Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The damage did not end when the water receded. An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis covering 45 rural districts in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan projected that more than 2.7 million children under five would suffer from acute malnutrition in the period up to September 2026, with around 706,000 expected to develop severe acute malnutrition, the life-threatening form that requires urgent therapeutic treatment. In nearly two-thirds of the districts analysed, levels of acute malnutrition among children were critical, and 232,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women were also expected to need treatment for acute malnutrition over the same period. In October 2026, Action Against Hunger further warned that an estimated 10.6 million people in Pakistan will require humanitarian assistance in 2026, placing Pakistan among the ten countries bearing the brunt of the global hunger crisis.

The price of an unaffordable diet

The economic logic is therefore even more urgent than it was in 2025. Malnutrition is now estimated to cost Pakistan around $17 billion every year through lost productivity, higher healthcare expenditure, poor educational outcomes and premature deaths. Across Pakistan’s provinces, 73 to 87 percent of all households already cannot afford a diverse, nutritious diet, with the cost being 1.5 to 1.7 times higher than households’ current food expenditure. In many low-income households, diets remain repetitive, often consisting of foods from just one to three of eight food groups, dominated by cereals, and lacking nutrient-rich foods such as eggs, milk, fish, fruit and vegetables. When a family is forced to choose between calories and nutrients, it will choose calories to survive today, even if that choice damages the child’s tomorrow. Add to this the fact that around 58 percent of household water is contaminated with coliform bacteria, exposing children to recurrent diarrhoeal infections that hinder nutrient absorption even when food is available, and it becomes clear why nutrition cannot be treated as a food problem alone.

What works: the Benazir Nashonuma Programme

Against this difficult background, Pakistan’s Benazir Nashonuma Programme stands out as an evidence-based global example of what works when interventions are comprehensive, targeted and delivered at scale. Implemented under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Nashonuma combines conditional cash transfers, integrated health services, nutrition counselling, and specialised nutritious foods for pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under two. The specialised food provided, Maamta for mothers and Wawamum for children, consists of 50 to 75 grams of nutrient-packed paste made from chickpeas and other ingredients such as vegetable oil, skimmed milk powder and vitamin and mineral premix, designed to fill critical nutrient gaps during pregnancy, breastfeeding and early childhood. It does not replace daily meals; it fills the gaps that current diets cannot address, especially during pregnancy and early childhood, while efforts to improve dietary diversity continue.

Scale and proof

What has changed since September 2025 is scale and proof. On 9 July 2026, BISP together with the World Food Programme, UNICEF and WHO announced a three-year extension of the Benazir Nashonuma Programme to protect an additional 3.3 million children and women from malnutrition across Pakistan. Since its launch in 2020, the programme has reached 4.7 million people through a nationwide network of 578 facilitation centres and 224 nutrition stabilization centres, and with this extension its total reach is expected to increase to 8 million people. The partnership is consolidating what is now described as one of the strongest results ever documented globally for a nutrition programme, with children enrolled found to be 22 percent less likely to be stunted at six months of age. In a country where, according to the National Nutrition Survey 2018, four in every ten children under five were stunted, equivalent to 10 million children, while wasting stood at 17.7 percent affecting 5 million children, that 22 percent difference is not a small statistic. It is the difference between a child who can learn and a child who will struggle for life.

The way forward

For Pakistan, investing in early life nutrition, especially during the first 1,000 days, remains a smart economic strategy, but it must now be treated as a climate-resilient strategy as well. As the country responds to ongoing floods, drought in places like Tharparkar, and rising food prices, protecting early life nutrition must remain a priority, not a programme to be paused during emergencies. This aligns with Pakistan’s commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals and the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, but it also aligns with a simpler truth that every family understands. The country already knows what works. The task now is to sustain and strengthen proven approaches, ensure they reach the most vulnerable households, safeguard the core elements that make them effective including targeted nutrition support, and stop treating nutrition as charity. When a child gets the right nutrients in the first 1,000 days, Pakistan does not just save a life: it earns $23 for every $1 spent, it saves $17 billion in annual losses, and it protects the potential of the next generation from being washed away by the next flood, the next price hike, or the next crisis.