Rising to the challenges of a new era: a switch to healthy diets for all

14 December, 2020, Rome – To address the multiple burdens of hunger and malnutrition, the spotlight must be shifted to agri-food systems that not only produce more food for the world’s fast-growing population but also provide access to affordable healthy and nutritious, and foods for all. This was a key takeaway from a FAO webinar on “Raising levels of Nutrition” which was held today.  

In his opening remarks, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said that FAO’s vision for nutrition is “a world where all people are eating healthy diets from sustainable agri-food systems”.  

“For decades hunger has been addressed by policies that aimed to increase food production, especially of staple crops with less focus on the production of these nutritious foods”, Qu said highlighting the growing need for increased production and investing more in the production of more nutritious foods and putting policies in place to make them more accessible and affordable .To this end, he noted that improving accessibility requires among other factors better infrastructure. 

Although hunger is still affecting some 690 million people globally, the face of malnutrition has changed significantly. Micronutrient deficiencies affect about two billion people, and overweight and obesity is rising rapidly, currently affecting over two billion persons globally. 

Speaking during the webinar, Jessica Fanzo from Johns Hopkins University said that multiple burdens of malnutrition are massive and universal, and healthy diets are unaffordable for the poor in every region of the world. To overcome these challenges, she underscored the need for coupling technological advances with sociocultural and policy changes towards sustainable food systems as well as taking good care of those who feed us. 

For his part, 2018 World Food Prize laureate Lawrence Haddad from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) cited legislation, policy, social protection programmes, research and leadership that “speaks truth to power” as key priorities on the path to global food systems transformation towards better nutrition.

William Masters from Tufts University said that a healthy diet remains beyond reach for about three billion people. He stressed the importance of focusing on retail costs for a whole diet changes perspective. 

Anna Lartey, Director of FAO’s Food and Nutrition Division, reminded the audience how FAO has been able in the last decade to mainstream nutrition across all its policies and programmes outside and inside FAO. 

The Director-General thanked Lartey for her valuable contributions to the work of FAO, as this was her last FAO event before retirement. 

To honour her prominent role within the global efforts on nutrition, FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero said: “Anna brought to the nutrition community, to FAO, and to the nutrition division the combination of scientific knowledge, reality tests, and importance of nutrition in all the dimensions we operate.”

FAO is currently updating its Vision and Strategy in Nutrition, anchoring it in the concept of sustainable agri-food systems. 

The webinar also included a panel discussion on nutrition which featured Professor Rob Knight, University of California, San Diego; Francesco Branca, Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, World Health Organization (WHO); and Professor Sandy Thomas, Executive Director, Global Panel for Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition.