Lawrence Haddad, Corinna Hawkes and colleagues propose ten ways to shift the focus from feeding people to nourishing them. The purpose of this paper was to set out a new global research agenda for nutrition. It is aimed mainly at researchers, funders and governments, but has important messages for all stakeholders.
First, how do we have to eat differently to significantly reduce malnutrition? Second, what food production systems do we have to put in place to use natural resources sustainably and live within climate change targets? The EAT Lancet Report is a landmark because it answers these two questions simultaneously.
The EAT-Lancet Commission is the first robust, extensive review of the evidence combining criteria for healthy dietary changes with environmental analyses of food system’s impacts, to find common ground that results in recommendations for food systems transformation. It is an impressive piece of work; a daunting task to include all the key components and supporting analyses into a single journal article.
I just finished reading ‘Why you eat what you eat' by Professor Rachel Herz. Fascinating, and together with Professor Michael Spence’s “Gastrophysics” it caused me to reflect on the radical changes we need to effectively promote healthy and nutritious diets, and reverse the out-of-control trends in malnutrition affecting every country.
Funding for nutrition has increased significantly over the past 10 years, which is a very good thing. So has the number of initiatives, organisations and programmes addressing nutrition. But is this an unqualified good thing?
Kenya was one of the Global Nutrition Report’s (GNR) star performers in 2017 in terms of stunting reduction – with levels nationally of 26%. Yet, the country is in full “double burden” mode with undernutrition and other manifestations of malnutrition such as obesity and diabetes running in parallel, often in the same communities or families.
Last week the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted the launch of a new report by the Global Panel – “Improving diets in an era of food market transformation – challenges and opportunities for engagement between the public and private sector”. Its main point: market forces are remaking the world food system at lightning speed, what should we do to make sure this reduces, not adds to, malnutrition?
This is an exciting time to be in Ethiopia. A new Prime Minister, Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali, was appointed in early April and the newly reshuffled cabinet was announced last week. We will certainly be working with GAIN and partners in Ethiopia to try to convince the new PM and his team that malnutrition sits uncomfortably in a nation that sees itself as a middle income country by 2025, a leading light in Africa, and a source of manufacturing and innovation.
Countries and donors increasingly recognise the benefits of evaluating public programs that could increase access to safe and nutritious foods for the poor. However, low- and middle-income countries face three main challenges to evaluation. Nonetheless, evaluation is feasible, as one recent study shows, and has potentially strong benefits for improving large-scale nutrition interventions.
This week sees the launch of the third global index and it provides a highly credible set of scores. The Access to Nutrition Index (ATNI) is one of the few independent science-based mechanisms to fame and shame the 22 biggest food and beverage companies on their efforts to improve nutrition through the marketing and formulation of their products.
