I just completed a trio of meetings in Asia (TICAD), Africa (AGRF) and North America (UN General Assembly) all of which had a strong set of dialogues around food systems, asking how they need to be rebuilt to promote human health, rural livelihoods and planetary health.
This week is World Breastfeeding Week, honouring one of the most effective and cost-effective nutrition interventions around: human breastmilk contains all the nutrients needed for young infants, conveying health benefits for both babies and mothers.
Last week GAIN awarded the outgoing Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Dr Graziano Da Silva, the 2019 Nutrition Inspiration Award. When looking back at Dr Da Silva’s tenure at FAO it is surprising at how revolutionary it has been. Unlike some others in our field, Dr Graziano has grasped that the world of hunger and nutrition is rapidly changing and he has equipped FAO to address those challenges.
Last week, GAIN co-led a five-day Executive Short Course entitled "Together for Nutrition: Public-Private engagement to improve the consumption of nutritious food". The course, the first of its kind, was made available by the six funders who together support GAIN’s Making Markets Work for Nutritious Foods programme.
What makes a great footballer? Presumably, training, determination… and muscle. Building muscle requires consuming large amounts of protein and energy, and eating meat is a highly efficient way of doing this. For the rest of us who are not athletes, however, it is less challenging to consume enough protein and energy in a standard portion size of food, and hundreds of millions of adults live a happy and healthy life without consuming any meat.
Recently GAIN and the Accesss to Nutrition Foundation (ATNF) co-hosted a meeting on "Building Business Commitments for the 2020 Nutrition for Growth Summit" in The Hague. There were 140 participants, with over 60 representatives from the business community. The host was the Government of the Netherlands and the meeting was opened by the Government of Japan, which will host next year’s Global Nutrition Summit.
GAIN and the Consumer Goods Forum co-convened a meeting on Better Nutrition for a Healthier Workforce. The purpose was to review the evidence and, if warranted, to elevate the issue beyond the rather low-key profile it currently has. What is a workforce nutrition programme? We reviewed evidence from high- and low-income countries and from corporate headquarters to supply chain settings.
The retail sector is where consumers come face to face with food. Retailers have significant influence over whether the food that consumers face is nutritious, safe, available, affordable or attractive. I have heard it said many times that the chief buyers for large food retailers are more important in influencing food choices than Ministries of Agriculture or Food.
Animal-source foods (ASFs) are controversial, political and personal. What is the evidence for their role in human health? The environment? This blog is based on a conference hosted by the University of California, Davis, titled "Aligning the Food System for Improved Nutrition in Animal-Source Foods" and aims to offer a window into recent scientific research and thinking.
Any organisation entering into a public private engagement has to be able to publicly justify using public funds. Identifying, preventing, reducing, mitigating and managing conflicts of interest is a key part of that. What are the risks of engaging with private sector?
