Malnutrition in all its forms is a major challenge everywhere in the world, and particularly in low and middle income countries. To reduce malnutrition, innovations in food systems are needed to both provide sufficient options for consumers to obtain diets with adequate nutritional value, and to help consumers make conscious and unconscious choices to choose healthier diets. A potential solution to this challenge is food systems innovations designed to lead to healthier diets. In this paper, we lay out a multidisciplinary framework for both identifying and analyzing innovations in food systems that can lead to improvements in the choices available to consumers and their diets from a health perspective. The framework identifies entry points for the design of potential food systems innovations, highlighting potential synergies, feedback, and tradeoffs within the food system. The paper concludes by providing examples of potential innovations and describes future research that can be developed to support the role of food systems in providing healthier diets.

Ensuring optimal diets and nutrition for the global population is a grand challenge fraught with many contentious issues. To achieve food security for all and protect health, we need functional, equitable, and sustainable food systems. Food systems are highly complex networks of individuals and institutions that depend on governance and policy leadership. This book explains how interconnected food systems and policies affect diets and nutrition in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. In tandem with food policy, food systems determine the availability, affordability, and nutritional quality of the food supply, which influences the diets that people are willing and able to consume. Readers will become familiar with both domestic and international food policy processes and actors, and they will be able to critically analyze and debate how policy and science affect diet and nutrition outcomes.

Food systems and diets are transforming rapidly in many parts of the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Changes in income, employment, taste, and location have direct implications for food choices and shopping patterns, which in turn have impacts on consumers’ nutrition and health, as well as environmental sustainability and resilience of the food system.

This paper, STEP 3, is the third of three background papers produced to inform the ‘Everyone Around the Table: FAO/GAIN Roundtable with Private Sector on Healthy Diets’ series of virtual roundtables which took place in July 2020. As in STEP 1 and STEP 2, the topics covered are relevant to all regions, but where possible a greater focus has been given to low- and middle-income countries. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are again a focus, given their role in the food systems of these regions (see STEP 1 for more detail), including their common presence in the food environments of many people living in poverty. STEP 3 (this paper) looks more closely at what it means to go to scale with healthy diets and better nutrition, providing examples and reflections for all stakeholders to consider.

Taking a food systems approach is a promising strategy for improving diets. Implementing such an approach would require the use of a comprehensive set of metrics to characterize food systems, set meaningful goals, track food systems performance, and evaluate the impacts of food systems interventions. Food systems metrics are also useful to structure debates and communicate to policy makers and the general public. This paper provides an updated analytical framework of food systems and uses this to systematically identify relevant metrics and indicators based on data availability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The list of indicators partly overlaps with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators, but these do not cover all aspects of the food system. We conclude that public data are relatively available on food systems drivers and outcomes, and on some, but not all, of the activities. With only minor additional investments, existing surveys could be extended to cover a large part of the required additional data. For some indicators, targeted data collection efforts are needed. Because of the overlap with the SDG indicators, part of the collected data could serve not only to describe and monitor food systems, but to track progress towards attaining the SDGs.

Progress toward reducing global hunger has stalled since the mid-2010s. In fact, hunger is on the rise again, driven by slowing economic growth and protracted conflict, intensified by the impacts of climate change and economic shocks in many low- and middle-income countries. In addition, food systems worldwide have suffered disruptions in recent years, caused by the COVID-19-related global recession and associated supply chain disruptions, and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. These factors have also jeopardized efforts at addressing the challenges to food system sustainability. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the related sustainable development goals (SDGs), defined in 2015, recognize these challenges and set ambitious targets to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition and to make agriculture and food systems sustainable by 2030. Many other fora have restated and reiterated these ambitions, including the 2021 United Nations Food System Summit (UNFSS). While governments around the world have subscribed to these ambitions, collectively they have not been very specific as to how to achieve the SDGs and related goals and targets, except for three means of implementation (MOI) involving (i) increases in research and development, (ii) reductions in trade distortions, and (iii) improved functioning and reduced volatility in food markets. This paper is part of a wider effort at assessing the international community’s follow-through on the above ambitions and the related (implicit or explicit) commitments made toward action for achieving them. While not presenting new research findings, we bring together available evidence and scenario analyses to assess the progress made toward the ambitions for transforming food systems, the actions taken in regard of the internationally concerted agenda, and the potential for accelerating progress. The number of hungry people in the world has risen from 564 million in 2015, when the SDGs were agreed, to 735 million in 2022. While declines to between 570 and 590 million by 2030 are projected, this is far above the 470 million projected in the absence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war. The share of the world’s people unable to afford healthy diets is projected to decline from 42 percent in 2021 to a still far too high 36 percent by 2030. On the means of implementation, levels of spending on agricultural research and development have increased, particularly in key developing countries such as Brazil, China and India. However, rates of investment remain too low for comfort, particularly in low-income countries. Also, little progress has been made in reducing agricultural trade distortions and many countries continue to use trade policy measures, such as export restrictions, which have proven to increase the volatility of both world and domestic food prices. We conclude that progress toward the SDG-2 targets has been dismal, and that the food system challenges have only become bigger. But we also find that it is not too late to accelerate progress and that the desired food system transformation can still be achieved over a reasonable timespan and at manageable incremental cost. Doing so will require unprecedented concerted and coherent action on multiple fronts, which may prove the biggest obstacle of all.

This Open Access book compiles the findings of the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 and its research partners. The Scientific Group was an independent group of 28 food systems scientists from all over the world with a mandate from the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. The chapters provide science- and research-based, state-of-the-art, solution-oriented knowledge and evidence to inform the transformation of contemporary food systems in order to achieve more sustainable, equitable and resilient systems.

Hidden hunger is not about providing enough calories, it is about a lack of micronutrients, which has life-long consequences for the children who are mostly affected. This begins with physical and cognitive developmental disorders and continues with an increased risk of non-communicable diseases and the occurrence of obesity. The book compiles the contributions of the Fourth Congress on Hidden Hunger 2019 as original articles. The focus of the congress was the problem of malnutrition and overweight, which can coexist and is termed a “double burden”. Part of the book deals with the causes of malnutrition and the challenge of achieving an agricultural system that is more focused on food quality. Another part discusses the causes and intervention approaches to tackling childhood obesity, especially in connection with malnutrition. All in all, this publication is a summary of important work by highly renowned authors on the topic of the congress: “Hidden Hunger and the Transformation of Food Systems: How to Combat the Double Burden of Malnutrition?” Like its two predecessors, the book fills an important gap by summarizing the essential aspects for science, applied research, and politics at a high level.

The national food system of Bangladesh has made substantial progress since experiencing famine in 1974, soon after independence. After the famine, the government placed a strong emphasis on policies required to attain grain self-sufficiency; since attaining self-sufficiency, the production system, policies related to it, and resulting diets have begun to diversify. Nonetheless, undernutrition remains a problem, and fruit and vegetable consumption are inadequate for most people relative to international recommendations. Moreover, as the food system has begun to transition towards a modern one, challenges related to food safety and perceived food adulteration have begun to rise. Further, increased processed food intakes are potentially associated with existing rising overweight and obesity status. Both government interventions and innovations are needed to help shift the national food system to improve nutrient-dense food availability, particularly among the poor, and to limit the increase in processed food consumption.