Cities face a huge challenge of ensuring that nutritious, safe and sustainable food is available to all residents, and that it is affordable and desirable. Today, this challenge is more critical than ever before, due to the demographic shift from rural to urban areas. The urban food environment – that is "the interface where people interact with the wider food system to acquire and consume foods" (Turner et al., 2018) – is one entry-point for developing local policies and programmes to address urban nutrition challenges. While some cities around the world have already implemented actions to shape the food environment, many more have expressed a need for guidance on the kinds of actions they could introduce to tackle the nutrition-related problems they face.
The "Menu of actions to shape urban food environments for improved nutrition" has been developed by GAIN, the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) Secretariat and the RUAF Foundation as a reference document that seeks to meet this need. It contains a large number of examples of policies and programmes, from countries in every region and in all income bands, to inspire and encourage other cities to initiate actions.