Eating is one of the most essential and fulfilling parts of life. Unfortunately, many people today are still getting sick and dying from dangerously tainted food, a report from the World Health Organization reveals. On Wednesday, the WHO released its latest estimates on the global toll of foodborne disease. More than 800 million people worldwide are sickened every year by food-related hazards, both microbial and chemical, while over 1.5 million people are killed annually, the report concluded. Many of these illnesses and deaths are preventable with better sanitation and improved health care access, the WHO says. “The high burden of both communicable and non-communicable foodborne diseases requires countries to prioritize developing strategies to improve the safety of the food supply,” wrote the authors of the report, published in The Lancet Global Health. The toll of bad food There are all sorts of things that can make our food unhealthy to consume, from viruses and bacteria to toxic metals like lead. In 2015, the WHO estimated that foodborne illness affected roughly 10% of the world’s population and killed at least 420,000 people annually. Even at the time, however, officials noted these numbers were likely an undercount, due to the many gaps in the research they had available.