A sta­tis­tic re­leased re­cent­ly should stop every pol­i­cy­mak­er, busi­ness leader and cit­i­zen in their tracks.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Unit­ed Na­tions food se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ment, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 512,000 peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, rep­re­sent­ing 36.8 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, can­not af­ford a healthy di­et. Even more con­cern­ing, around 400,000 peo­ple are es­ti­mat­ed to be fac­ing mod­er­ate or se­vere food in­se­cu­ri­ty, while rough­ly 200,000 peo­ple re­main un­der­nour­ished. These are not fig­ures from a con­flict zone or a coun­try ex­pe­ri­enc­ing eco­nom­ic col­lapse. They are fig­ures from Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2026.

For years, dis­cus­sions about the econ­o­my have cen­tred on en­er­gy prices, GDP growth, for­eign ex­change short­ages, fis­cal deficits and in­fla­tion rates. While these in­di­ca­tors mat­ter, they of­ten fail to an­swer a much sim­pler ques­tion: How are or­di­nary cit­i­zens ac­tu­al­ly liv­ing?