The UN Food Systems Summit will launch bold new actions, solutions and strategies to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems.
At every life stage, micronutrients are crucial to immune system function and resilience to infectious disease. This brief makes the case for large scale staple food fortification as a critically important tool to fight malnutrition in general, and even more so during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic shifts into its second phase, food fortification has never been so necessary in the fight against malnutrition, according to a call to action endorsed by Food Fortification Initiative, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Helen Keller International, Iodine Global Network, Nutrition International, the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, UNICEF and the World Food Programme.
The Giving Women Annual Conference is a crucial platform for different actors including UN organisations, civil society, NGOs, business, academia, among others to inform, reflect, and act together to bring dignity and agency to women and girls worldwide.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has underlined the faults that existed in the past systems, which requires developing multi-sectoral solutions to show the road for a stronger future.
Although eggs are highly nutritious, they remain scarce and relatively expensive in many low-income settings, including across many of the countries where GAIN operates. Moreover, they are only rarely consumed by children in many regions. Globally, the average egg supply is around 3.5 eggs per person per week.
A few months ago, a new analysis came out with a shocking number: about 1.6 billion people could not afford a healthy, sustainable diet. A few weeks ago, the publication of the 2020 "State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World" (SOFI) report further rocked the food and nutrition community with an even more startling number: an estimated 3 billion people could not afford a healthy diet.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our economies, health and food systems and threatens to deepen the global crisis of malnutrition. Food fortification strategies are an essential part of the nutrition safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond – helping to restore access to healthy diet when the availability of fresh produce and animal-source foods is limited.
In countries where the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) main offices are located, tomatoes vary in abundance - with the average supply from approximately one tenth of a medium-sized (60g) tomato per person per week in Ethiopia, to four medium-sized tomatoes per person per week in India, and up to 12 medium-sized tomatoes per person per week in the US.
Based on an external assessment, this working paper summarises PLAN’s work in Nigeria (N-PLAN) and Indonesia (I-PLAN), impacts to date, and key learnings. The assessment indicated that PLAN has helped create influential networks, allowing diverse stakeholders to work together to address common issues related to post-harvest loss.