Social protection programmes and public policies are fundamental to reducing hunger and the quality of our food – both produced and consumed – must be improved, FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at a handover ceremony marking his last day at the UN agency’s helm.

Food systems are essential to delivering healthy, affordable and sustainable diets, but the nutritional needs of children and adolescents (both of present and future generations) are often not prioritized. Actors across the food system, including food producers and suppliers, typically do not account for the nutritional needs of children and adolescents when determining what foods to grow, produce, distribute, and sell. Processed, less nutritious foods are skillfully marketed and widely available and affordable, while nutritious foods are often more expensive and unaffordable to many. The food environment often does not lend itself to nutritious diets for children and adolescents, nor is it incentivized to do so. Actors across local, national and global food systems need to be held accountable for providing healthy, affordable and sustainable diets to children and adolescents today and in the future.

To this end, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, co-hosted a global consultation on children, adolescents and food systems at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti on 5-7 November 2018. The consultation brought together 60 participants from government, development partners, business, and academia from low-, middle- and high-income settings. The consultation aimed to:

The consultation aimed to:

(1)     Develop a common narrative around the need for food systems to produce nutritious, safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable diets for children and adolescents,

(2)     Validate a common approach to elucidate priority actions within the food system to improve diets of children and adolescents, and

(3)     Develop an action plan to improve children and adolescents’ diets using a food systems approach.    

Documents and presentations for download:

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By 2050, nearly 10 billion people will live on the planet. Can we produce enough food sustainably? World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that it is possible – but there is no silver bullet. This report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed everyone without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us.

WRI produced the report in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, and the French agricultural research agencies CIRAD and INRA.