This paper posits the urban food environment as an extremely useful policy-making framework for developing actions to improve nutrition, as it is the point at which people and food interact. It describes the nutritional challenges of urban areas and how urban food environments influence nutrition through the affordability, physical access to, convenience and desirability of healthy foods.
The world is urbanising rapidly, and malnutrition in urban areas (including both undernutrition and overweight/obesity) is an increasing problem. City policymakers in all countries are well placed to address urban malnutrition by virtue of their access to a wide variety of policy-level entry-points to food access and physical activity.
Fighting malnutrition in all its forms is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Addressing it will require an agricultural transformation. Within Africa, this must include a focus on small and medium-size farms, which provide about 80% of total calories in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as other small actors along the value chain.
The SUN Business Network (SBN) / Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) are conducting a pilot project with the International Food and Beverage Alliance (IFBA) to support the replacement of industrially-produced trans-fatty acids (iTFA) by local companies in Nigeria and Pakistan.
Food supply chains are challenged to deliver affordable, safe and nutritious food. GAIN has developed a tool for analysing specific supply chains identify weaknesses or bottlenecks and suggesting potential interventions to improve nutrition along the supply chain, i.e. Supply Chain Analysis for Nutrition (SCAN). Supply chains structure how goods and services move from producers to consumers and are key components of the food system.
Devising strategies to support consumer food choices is a high priority for the food systems and health agenda. Front-of-package labels (FOPL) provide visible nutrition information on packaged foods and have been introduced in 55 countries.
Most front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) systems operate in high-income countries (HICs) on packaged foods purchased in a supermarket setting. To explore the role that FOPL and other types of visual cues could play in supporting consumers’ ability to choose nutritious foods in LMICs, GAIN convened three workshops in 2018-2019.
Through funding from BESTSELLER, GAIN worked in the states of Karnataka and Bihar in India, to improve the nutrition and lives of groups of semi-literate women and children. GAIN equipped women’s Self-Help Groups (SHGs) to produce nutritious food rations.
Animal-source foods (ASF) have long been important components of human diets, providing essential macro- and micronutrients. However, ASF production has increasingly been scrutinised as a driver of negative global environmental change, including climate change.
Large-scale food fortification (LSFF) is a cost-effective intervention that is widely implemented, but there is scope to further increase its potential. To identify gaps and opportunities, we first accessed the Global Fortification Data Exchange (GFDx) to identify countries that could benefit from new fortification programs.
