A new report from IIED and Hivos calls for a rethink about how sustainable diets can be achieved in low-income countries, with informal food systems central to that goal.

COVID-19 has highlighted the global food system’s inequalities, with the disease and the measures to contain it disproportionately affecting low-income communities.

The pandemic may trigger a wave of hunger and malnutrition, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is disrupting supply chains. There too, low-income populations are both affected as consumers by price increases and are at risk of losing their livelihoods in trading, processing and vending.

The vulnerability exposed by COVID-19 is reflected in this year’s World Food Day call to make food systems more resilient to volatility and climate change, so that they can "deliver affordable and sustainable healthy diets for all, and decent livelihoods for food system workers”.

It follows the call by researchers and international organisations to improve our health through dietary change and to make food production systems less destructive of our natural environment.

The concept of sustainable healthy diets (PDF) captures the goals and ambitions of this transformation, but there are obstacles to its implementation in the largely informal food systems of lower-income countries.