Food System Innovations For Healthier Diets In Low And Middle Income Countries

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.

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 cove

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.