Currently, one in three people are malnourished, leading the United Nations to declare “malnutrition in all its forms” an urgent health concern. Indeed, poor diets are the leading cause of poor health worldwide according to the Global Burden of Disease study.
Our current food systems have evolved to focus on food quantity rather than food quality, enabling huge population growth, but frequently at the expense of good nutrition. In order to improve diet quality, there must be transformation across our food systems, from agriculture to supply chains to consumption.
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Access the Special IssueIn addition to damaging our health, food systems around the world are damaging our natural environment. Food systems are responsible for up to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of water use, and the majority of biodiversity loss. In fact, recent analyses have shown that the world cannot meet the targets of the Paris Agreement without significantly reducing emissions resulting from our current food systems.
The message is clear: the world’s food systems need to change dramatically. In response, Current Developments in Nutrition has published a special issue, Enabling Transformation of Food Systems. This special issue, consisting of 23 articles, including original research, reviews and perspectives, addresses the issues and presents the evidence needed to support policies and programs needed to transform our current food systems into food systems that are sustainable and provide good nutrition for all. The 23 articles include:
- Enabling Transformation of Food Systems: Some Issues to Address
- Monitoring the Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet within Countries: Building Systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Viet Nam
- Effectiveness of Elements of Social Behavior Change Activities in Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Programs: A Systematic Review
- From Streets to Tables: Bottom–up, Co-creation Case Studies for Healthier Food Environments in Vietnam and Nigeria
- Development of the Diet Quality Questionnaire for Measurement of Dietary Diversity and Other Diet Quality Indicators
- Development of an Indian Food Composition Database
- The Egg Hub Model: A Sustainable and Replicable Approach to Address Food Security and Improve Livelihoods
- Environmental Sustainability of Food Environments: Development and Application of a Framework in 4 Cities in South Asia
- Using Novel Multimethod Evaluation Approaches to Understand Complex Food System Interventions: Insights from a Supply Chain Intervention Intended to Improve Nutrition
- Disaggregation of Dairy in Composite Foods in the United Kingdom
- Red and Red Processed Meat Consumption Behaviors in Scottish Adults
- Measuring Community Urbanicity and Its Influence on Household Food Security across Nepal’s Agroecological Zones
- The Need to Consider Food Systems in Health-Oriented Food Policy and Programs
- Assessing the Cost of Nutritionally Adequate and Low-Climate Impact Diets in Finland
- Opportunities for Consistent and Holistic Metrics to Support Food Systems Transformation: A Summary of a Symposium Presented at Nutrition 2023
- Evidence on Milk Consumption and Production Linkages from Rural Bihar, India
- “We Want to Eat and Be Healthy Just Like Everybody Else”: How Social Infrastructures Affect Nutrition Equity in a Racialized Urban Community in the United States
- Wild Foods Are Positively Associated with Diet Diversity and Child Growth in a Protected Forest Area of Madagascar
- Consumption of Discretionary Salt and Salt from Bouillon among Households, Women, and Young Children in Northern Region, Ghana: A Mixed-Methods Study with the Condiment Micronutrient Innovation Trial (CoMIT) Project
- Higher Imported Food Patterns Are Associated with Obesity and Severe Obesity in Tuvalu: A Latent Class Analysis
- Fruit and Vegetable Intake of Females before, during, and after Introduction of 3 Bundled Food System Interventions in Urban Vietnam and Nigeria
- Visualizing Data Interoperability for Food Systems Sustainability Research—From Spider Webs to Neural Networks
- Beyond the Food Systems Summit: Linking Recommendations to Action—The True Cost of Food
We invite you to peruse the entire special issue and hope that you can take advantage of the information to advance your own research studies as well as advocate for and participate in the development and implementation of healthy, sustainable food systems.
