Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s food and nutrition landscape reflects a double burden of malnutrition. While many children remain undernourished, a growing number of adults are living with obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases. The situation has also been worsened by a prolonged economic crisis that sharply increased poverty.

Poverty rates rose from 19.9% in 2019 to 24.5% in 2024, even though the economy began to stabilize with 5.0% growth in 2024.

Nutrition challenges differ by age group. Among children under five, undernutrition worsened during the recent crisis: the share of underweight children increased from 12.2% in 2021 to 15.3% in 2022.

Among adults, the pattern shifts toward overnutrition. Obesity affects 8.9% of women and 3.7% of men, while diabetes affects about 23.0% of adults aged 18 and older.

Diet quality is also a concern. Rice provides about 56% of total energy intake, and fruit and vegetable intake is low, with around 60% of adults not eating fruit at all.

Nutrition governance is led primarily by the Ministry of Health, although coordination across sectors has been difficult during the economic crisis. The Emergency Nutrition Action Plan (2022–2024) was developed to respond to the immediate nutrition emergency.

A major regulatory development is the introduction of food regulations effective in 2025, requiring nutrition labels in all three national languages and prohibiting the use of children under 12 in food advertisements.

The country also uses taxes on sugary drinks and maintains a long-running school meal program that has recently been expanded to reach more than 100,000 primary school children in urban areas.

Sri Lanka’s food environment is shaped by both traditional and modern retail systems. Many households still depend on neighborhood shops and wet markets because they are affordable and accessible, while supermarkets are expanding in urban areas and selling more processed and ultra-processed foods.

Food marketing strongly influences dietary choices, especially among children and young people. One study found that 78% of food advertisements on television were focused on children, with most promoting unhealthy products.

There are also important geographic inequalities. Urban areas tend to show higher obesity, while rural plantation communities face much higher rates of malnutrition and child growth problems.

In late 2022, around 37% of households faced severe difficulty accessing food.

By late 2023, this improved to 24%, but many families still spent over 60% of their income on food.