Zafar Iqbal
Pakistan’s latest Household Integrated Economic Survey has landed at an awkward moment. By most macroeconomic measures, the country appears to be catching its breath. Inflation has eased from punishing highs, the stock market keeps touching new records, the external account is no longer flashing red, and Pakistan has briefly returned to the geopolitical conversation. On paper, the mood is calmer, even hopeful.
But the survey tells a very different story from inside Pakistani homes. Across kitchens, dining mats, and grocery lists, the reality is moving in the opposite direction. The HIES 2024–25 delivers one deeply unsettling message: Pakistanis are eating less.
This is not a marginal change or a problem confined to one group. Per capita food consumption has declined across income categories, across provinces, and across urban and rural households when compared with the previous survey in 2018–19. In several key food items, consumption is even lower than it was two decades ago. That alone should shatter any complacency about recent “stabilisation.”
Some may try to soften the blow by arguing that falling wheat and rice consumption reflects healthier eating habits or changing preferences. In wealthier societies, such an argument might make sense. In Pakistan, it does not. Food choices here are rarely driven by lifestyle experimentation or wellness trends. They are driven by price tags and survival.
The same survey shows that nearly one in four households now faces moderate to severe food insecurity, up sharply from 16 percent just five years ago. This is not the profile of a society consciously cutting back on carbohydrates for health reasons. It is the profile of families forced to reduce intake because their incomes no longer stretch far enough.
The decline runs deeper than cereals. Pulses, a crucial and affordable protein source for millions, are being consumed less than they were twenty years ago. Milk consumption, often treated as a basic indicator of nutrition, shows a worrying downward trend despite population growth and urbanisation. Beef and mutton have long been out of reach for most households, but even chicken, once the cheaper alternative, is struggling to maintain its place on the plate.
If there is one item whose consumption has increased, it is cooking oil. But this is hardly good news. Oil is a dense, relatively cheap source of calories, often used to stretch meals when other foods become unaffordable. This is not dietary diversification. It is coping behaviour. Calories are being preserved, while nutrition is quietly sacrificed.
Tea consumption continues to rise, perhaps the most telling detail of all. In Pakistan, chai is more than a beverage. It is a filler, a comfort, a way to push hunger aside when meals get smaller. When food consumption declines and tea consumption rises, the message is unmistakable.
This is where the comforting macro narrative collides head-on with household reality. Real incomes in Pakistan have not just stagnated. They have been steadily hollowed out over the past two decades and then brutally compressed over the last three to four years. Inflation may have cooled, but prices have already reset at much higher levels. Stability has arrived after the damage was done.
Households are eating less not because food has become less important, but because everything else has become unavoidable. Energy bills, rent, school fees, transport costs, healthcare expenses, and basic utilities now crowd out food from household budgets. Families are making trade-offs, and food is increasingly the variable that gets adjusted.
The consequences of this adjustment will not show up immediately in economic dashboards. They will not dent quarterly GDP growth or unsettle financial markets. They will surface more slowly and far more painfully, in rising malnutrition, stunting among children, weaker immune systems, lower learning outcomes, and declining productivity. A society that consistently under-consumes protein and dairy does not build human capital. It erodes it.
This is the uncomfortable truth the HIES forces us to confront. Pakistan’s version of macro stability has been achieved by squeezing households, and that squeeze is now visible on dinner plates. Celebrating lower inflation without acknowledging that people are consuming less than they did years ago is misleading. Applauding stock market gains in a country where a quarter of households face food insecurity borders on indifference.
The survey should not be treated as a routine statistical release or a technical document for economists alone. It is a welfare alarm bell. It tells us that whatever growth model Pakistan has followed has failed to protect basic consumption, even during periods of relative calm.
If people are eating less today than they did five, ten, or twenty years ago, then something fundamental is broken. It suggests that growth, when it occurs, is not translating into household resilience. It suggests that adjustment costs are being passed downward, while gains remain concentrated at the top.
Markets may look steady. Accounts may appear balanced. Headlines may sound optimistic. But beneath all that, Pakistani households are tightening belts that were already tight. No amount of macroeconomic spin can turn an emptier plate into a success story. Until policy begins with what people can actually afford to eat, stability will remain a surface illusion, not a shared reality.
