For the past five years, an unusual gathering of thought-leaders and experts from the realms of science, policy, business and civil society has taken place in Stockholm to tackle the interconnected challenges of food, health and sustainability. This June, the Government of Sweden is for the first time co-hosting the EAT Food Forum in Stockholm.
On the menu are critical conversations about today’s broken food system, but also as important, the unprecedented opportunity that lies before us to improve the health, nutrition and long-term human and natural capital of both people and planet.
By investing in better nutrition for all, we can improve the lives of the approximately 3 billion people – 1 in 3 people on the planet – who are currently eating too little, too much or the wrong types of food. Unhealthy diets have become a leading risk factor for disease globally and the main driver of the epidemic of chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
Two-thirds of the world’s overweight and obese people now live in developing countries, due to the transition towards diets heavy in meat and processed foods. At the same time, undernutrition – especially in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life – leads to stunting in early childhood, which holds back optimal growth and development of more than one-third of children in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Investing in early childhood nutrition yields enormous returns—allowing children to develop and reach their full educational and economic potential, reducing health costs, and boosting countries’ human capital and future growth prospects.
Countries all over the world are proving that it is possible to make real change. Peru made fighting chronic malnutrition everyone’s business and took long-lasting policy decisions for health and social services. As a result, the country halved its stunting rates in just eight years. Senegal achieved similar declines in child stunting over less than a decade, and Rwanda has committed to do the same.
In the Pacific island of Samoa, where it is possible to grow fruit and vegetables year-round, imported ultra-processed foods have led to poor diets and skyrocketing rates of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other non-communicable diseases, putting immense pressure on the healthcare system and posing long-term risks to the economy. The country is linking agriculture and health outcomes to turn the situation around by increasing the production, competitiveness and local supply of fruits and vegetables and boosting demand for fresh, local produce, starting with school-aged children.
Click here to read the full article by by Isabella Lövin, Kristalina Georgieva & Gunhild Stordalen on the Thomson Reuters Foundation News website.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
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