FAO Webinar: Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: What are they? How they are used? What is their potential?

Tuesday 4 June
13.00 (GMT), 14.00 (CET)

Presenter: Fatima Hachem
Senior Nutrition and Food Systems Officer
Nutrition Education and Consumer Awareness Group, FAO

In the arena of food and nutrition, consumers around the globe are bombarded with information and advice on how to eat better in order to improve health and well-being. Having dietary guidelines that are food-based, built on scientific evidence and culturally and economically appropriate to the local context is what governments have been engaged in establishing in the last few decades.  Although these guidelines were thought essentially as a consumer education tool, the data and information base on which they are founded goes beyond the nutritional problems at country level to span a wide area of related sectors and policies. This renders the dietary guidelines useful for a range of other usages while addressing the local public health and nutrition priorities, including public procurement, social protection, food subsidies, food security and nutrition and agricultural policies. 

FAO has been actively assisting Member Countries in the development, implementation and revision of their Food-based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) and has been periodically reviewing the progress made in the development and use of FBDGs as well as tracking changes in their overall focus and orientation. FAO also hosts a growing online repository of FBDGs which is proving useful for researchers and policy-makers alike.

Join us for this webinar where we will provide an overview of food-based dietary guidelines focusing on the following questions:

  • What are national FBDGs?
  • How have they been traditionally used? 
  • What is their potential use?

The webinar will also highlight some examples of national FBDGs across the world, and present FAO’s current work in this field.

This is the first of a series of 6 webinars on FBDGs that are organized by the Nutrition Education and Consumer Awareness Team of FAO

Register here

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FAO chief hails international treaty combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today hailed the countries committed to combating unsustainable and illegal fishing, calling the rapid international adoption of the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) a “fantastic achievement”. 87 countries are signatories and another 18 are preparing to adhere.
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E-Conference: The Latest Evidence on Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture

3-5 June 2019

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture offers great potential for Sustainable Development Goal 2 as it connects agricultural development to improved nutrition outcomes. Examples of nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions are bio-fortification, home vegetable gardens, and small animal rearing (Ruel et al. 2018).

Since many nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions have been applied in recent years, this E-Conference aims to:

  • Take stock of what we have learned so far about nutrition-sensitive agriculture, i.e. what works and what does not work, and under what conditions?

  • Share and discuss this knowledge with practitioners in the field (e.g. farmers, extension workers, NGOs and policy makers)

  • Turn the evidence base into concrete recommendations for practitioners to implement effective nutrition-sensitive interventions in agricultural development

Register to join this free online conference. Subscribing allows you to participate in the daily live sessions with our experts and access the online community to discuss insights, exchange project results, ask questions and discuss challenges with colleagues from around the world.

Programme

Monday 3 June, 13:00 GMT: Smallholder production and Dietary Diversity

Matin Qaim of the University of Göttingen will discuss the linkages between smallholder on-farm production diversity and impacts on dietary diversity, as well as the impacts of specialization of cash crops on consumption benefits.

Tuesday 4 June, 13:00 GMT: Market Challenges and Solutions to Nutritious Food Access

Harold Alderman of IFPRI will discuss the linkages between markets, diets and nutrition with a particular focus on affordability and access of nutritious foods in low- and middle-income contexts, the challenges and potential market-based solutions.

Wednesday 5 June, 13:00 GMT: Women’s Empowerment for Better Nutrition

Agnes Quisumbing of IFPRI will discuss women’s empowerment as well as ownership and control of assets, and its impacts on child and women’s nutritional status and overall household food security.

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Launch of the UN’s Decade of Family Farming to unleash family farmers’ full potential

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) today launched the United Nations' Decade of Family Farming and a Global Action Plan to boost support for family farmers, particularly those in developing countries.
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Launch of the UN’s Decade of Family Farming to unleash family farmers’ full potential

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) today launched the United Nations' Decade of Family Farming and a Global Action Plan to boost support for family farmers, particularly those in developing countries.
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What is the Cost of a Healthy Diet? New Price Indexes Reveal Changes in Affordability of Nutritious Foods – IFPRI Policy Seminar

29 May, 2019 - 12:15 PM TO 01:45 PM EDT

Interventions and innovation can lower the price of individual foods, but healthy eating depends on access to a mix of foods from diverse sources. How has the overall cost of meeting dietary needs changed over time worldwide, and in Africa and South Asia specifically? What determines the cost of a healthy diet? And how does affordability affect dietary intake and health status in different locales?

To answer these questions, Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar will present the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Research by Tufts and IFPRI on this topic is supported by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Speakers

Discussant

Panelists

Light lunch will be available starting at 11:45am. Event begins promptly at 12:15pm.

Click here to register

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FAO widens its treaty work on pesticide trade information exchange

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to renew its participation in the UN Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty governing trade in hazardous pesticides.
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Celebrating family farmers’ contribution to Zero Hunger and healthier diets

Family farmers, who are on the frontline of global efforts to fight undernourishment and other forms of malnutrition and to promote healthy eating, require stronger support amid rising hunger and obesity around the world, the President of the UN General Assembly, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, said in Rome today.
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FAO’s goal: Healthy food for all, based on sustainable agricultural development

Focusing only on producing more food is not enough, it is also crucial to produce food, that is healthy and nutritious in a way that preserves the environment, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at the Caritas Internationalis’ General Assembly in Rome.
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Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus calls for a new approach to address hunger and conflict

Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus today called for a complete change in the ways to address the often-related issues of hunger and conflict. He made the appeal at an event at FAO headquarters in Rome highlighting progress made by the FAO-Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace.
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