Hunger, malnutrition, lack of micronutrients, overweight and obesity have greater impact on people with lower income, women, indigenous people, Afro-descendants and rural families in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a new UN report.
The brief, Preventing nutrient loss and waste across the food system: Policy actions for high-quality diets, points out that poor-quality diets are now a greater public health threat than malaria, tuberculosis or measles. Meanwhile, approximately one third of all the food produced for human consumption never reaches the consumer's plate or bowl.
Declining agricultural commodity prices will ease the bill the world’s poorest countries pay for food imports, although the rising U.S. dollar poses “serious concerns”, FAO's Food Outlook says. Worldwide food imports are likely to reach $1.467 trillion in 2018, 3.0 percent above the previous year’s level.
The international community is failing to end hunger, evidenced by the tragic crisis in Yemen, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) José Graziano da Silva told a high-level briefing on food insecurity to Member States at the United Nations in New York.
HANGZHOU – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Alibaba Group (Alibaba), the world’s largest e-commerce company by transaction value, have entered into a strategic partnership to support efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 – a world with zero hunger. 

UNICEF Programme Guidance for the Second Decade: Programming with and for Adolescents provides an overview of the strategic direction UNICEF will assume to advance children’s quality of life in the second decade of life.
 
The Guidance underscores the importance of adequate nutrition for optimal growth and development in adolescent girls and boys. It emphasizes the provision of nutrition counseling and services, the promotion of healthy and diversified diets - including fortified foods – and, where necessary, the use of micronutrient supplements.
 
The Guidance recognizes schools as a critical platform to deliver nutrition interventions and improve nutrition literacy, while acknowledging that school-based interventions need to be supported by community-based approaches and other delivery models, especially to reach out-of-school adolescents. Healthy eating and well-nourished bodies and brains are the foundation for improved learning outcomes and brighter futures, the core of the recently launched Generation Unlimited Partnership.
 
To complement this overarching Guidance, UNICEF will issue Programme Guidance on Adolescent Nutrition in early 2019 to detail the organization’s approach for the operationalization of evidence-based interventions to address all forms of malnutrition among adolescent boys and girls.

The CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) 2017 Annual Report report highlights the program's accomplishments and activities during the first year of its second phase.

Detailed in the report are research, events, and results from across A4NH's five research flagships and four focus countries, including:

An interactive version of the report is available, while the full report can be downloaded here.

In an effort to present nutrition related news at the global and country level, UNSCN and the UNN Secretariats are teaming up to produce the first comprehensive overview of recent developments supported and/or coordinated by the UN system.

This first edition includes:

GLOBAL UPDATES

  • The Third High-level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of NCDs
  • Nutrition in the 2030 Agenda
  • Nutrition Outcomes from 45th Session of the Committee on World Food Security

COUNTRY UPDATES

  • Multi-sectoral nutrition mapping exercise in the Democratic Republic of Congo highlights opportunities for reaching more vulnerable people
  • Mapping exercise fuels multi-sectoral action to account for nutrition results in Mali
  • Lesotho bridging the gap for better nutrition capacity
  • ‘CAN’ helps sensitise the media about nutrition in Haiti

PUBLICATIONS and a CALENDAR OF NUTRITION RELATED EVENTS

You can access you copy here.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a recovery programme to help more than 70 000 Indonesian farmers and fishers grow food and fish again following a series of disasters that just over a month ago devastated their lives. The country’s deadliest earthquake in more than a decade, a tsunami and then landslides wracked havoc on people’s homes and lands, and caused widespread loss of life and displacement.
World’s biggest region at serious risk of missing 2030 targets to end all forms of malnutrition—from hunger to obesity