Food Environment Typology: Advancing an Expanded Definition, Framework, and Methodological Approach for Improved Characterization of Wild, Cultivated, and Built Food Environments toward Sustainable Diets

The food environment is a critical place in the food system to implement interventions to support sustainable diets and address the global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change, because it contains the total scope of options within which consumers make decisions about which foods to acquire and consume. In this paper, we build on existing definitions of the food environment, and provide an expanded definition that includes the parameter of sustainability properties of foods and beverages, in order to integrate linkages between food environments and sustainable diets. We further provide a graphical representation of the food environment using a socio-ecological framework. Next, we provide a typology with descriptions of the different types of food environments that consumers have access to in low-, middle-, and high-income countries including wild, cultivated, and built food environments. We characterize the availability, affordability, convenience, promotion and quality (previously termed desirability), and sustainability properties of food and beverages for each food environment type. Lastly, we identify a methodological approach with potential objective and subjective tools and metrics for measuring the different properties of various types of food environments. The definition, framework, typology, and methodological toolbox presented here are intended to facilitate scholars and practitioners to identify entry points in the food environment for implementing and evaluating interventions that support sustainable diets for enhancing human and planetary health

SUSTAINABLE, RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEMS FOR HEALTHY DIETS

Sustainable, resilient food systems for healthy diets has been identified as the first of the six pillars for action during the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition. It is now THE defining issue for public health nutrition. A sustainable food system is one ‘that ensures food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition of future generations are not compromised'. Resilience refers to the capacity of a food system to achieve this same objective ‘in the face of various and even unforeseen disturbances’ including environmental, economic or socio-political shocks. Sustainable food systems are essential if we are to nourish a projected global population of nearly 10 billion in 2050 within planetary boundaries. However, today’s food systems are far from sustainable. Not only are dietary risk factors and malnutrition in all its forms the leading contributors to the global burden of disease, but also food systems are not operating within some planetary boundaries and are contributing to widespread and potentially irreversible environmental breakdown degradation, including potentially irreversible disruption. Understanding the impact of population dietary intake has extended beyond health and the ability of food systems to provide sufficient quantity, quality and diversity of safe, affordable and nutritious foods, to interlinkages of diets and food systems with climate change, water and land pollution, deforestation and biodiversity loss and other forms of environmental degradation. The focus on healthy diets from sustainable food systems connects all parts of food supply chains (from food production to consumption) and the social, economic and environmental outputs of those systems

Building a Global Food Systems Typology: A New Tool for Reducing Complexity in Food Systems Analysis

Food systems have a profound impact on diets, nutrition, health, economic development, and environmental sustainability. Yet their complexity poses a persistent challenge in identifying the policy actions that are needed to improve human and planetary health outcomes. Typologies are a useful classification tool to identify similarities and differences among food systems, while reducing this analytical complexity. This study presents a new food system typology, implemented at the country level using parsimonious data that characterize food supply chains, food environments, consumer-related factors, and key outcomes, including dietary intake, nutritional status, health, and environmental impacts. Five food system types are identified: rural and traditional; informal and expanding; emerging and diversifying; modernizing and formalizing; and industrial and consolidated. Patterns across the five system types in key outcome variables align with narratives provided by the food systems and nutrition transition literature, demonstrating the usefulness of this classification method. Substantial heterogeneity nonetheless still exists within individual food system types. Therefore, the recommended use of the typology is in early stages of hypothesis generation, to identify potential risk factors or constraints in the food system that can be explored further at national and sub-national levels

Replacement of Contentious Inputs in Organic Farming Systems (RELACS) – a comprehensive Horizon 2020 project

Organic farmers adhere to high standards in producing quality food while protecting the environment. However, organic farming needs to improve continuously to keep meeting its ambitious objectives. The project ‘Replacement of Contentious Inputs in Organic Farming Systems’ (RELACS) will foster the development and adoption of cost-efficient and environmentally safe tools and technologies to further reduce the use of external inputs on organic farms across Europe as well as in Non EU Mediterranean countries. Project partners will provide scientific support to develop fair and implementable EU rules to improve current practices in organic farming. Farm advisory networks in 11 European countries will reach out to farmers to ensure effective dissemination and adoption of the tools and techniques

Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in South Asia and East Africa: examining the enabling environment through stakeholder perceptions

South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are the two regions of the world with the highest concentration of undernutrition. The majority of the nutritionally vulnerable populations in both regions is dependent in some way upon agriculture as a primary source of livelihood. The agriculture sector and wider agri-food system is considered to be central to sustained progress in reducing undernutrition – and yet not enough is known about how to unleash this potential. Recent scoping assessments have also revealed a paucity of information on wider political, institutional and policy-related challenges relating to the agriculture-nutrition nexus globally. Contextualized research into policy processes and the political economy of agriculture and nutrition is needed to better characterize “enabling environments” for agriculture to benefit nutrition, and how these environments can be shaped and sustained. This study aims to contribute to filling this gap, by drawing upon evidence from a set of case studies in South Asia (India, Bangladesh and Pakistan) and eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya). In synthesizing results across countries, while recognizing important nuance and detail, we conclude by highlighting four key issues to be addressed. First, improving knowledge and perception of undernutrition and its links to agriculture, on the part of agricultural policymakers and programme managers. Second, generating system-wide incentives for decisions and actions to become more pro-nutrition. Third, developing transparent systems of accountability for nutrition-relevant action throughout the agriculture sector, through linking timely and actionable data and evidence with incentives. And fourth, cultivating and strengthening leadership and capacities at different levels, underpinned by adequate financing.UK AidDepartment for International Development (DFID

Sustainable development goal 2: improved targets and indicators for agriculture and food security

The pursuit of global food security and agricultural sustainability, the dual aim of the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-2), requires urgent and concerted action from developing and developed countries. This, in turn, depends on clear and universally applicable targets and indicators which are partially lacking. The novel and complex nature of the SDGs poses further challenges to their implementation on the ground, especially in the face of interlinkages across SDG objectives and scales. Here we review the existing SDG-2 indicators, propose improvements to facilitate their operationalization and illustrate their practical implementation in Nigeria, Brazil and the Netherlands. This exercise provides insights into the concrete actions needed to achieve SDG-2 across contrasting development contexts and highlights the challenges of addressing the links between targets and indicators within and beyond SDG-2. Ultimately, it underscores the need for integrated policies and reveals opportunities to leverage the fulfillment of SDG-2 worldwide

Gaps and priorities in assessment of food environments for children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries

School-aged children and adolescents have complex interactions with their food environments—the point of engagement of individuals with the food system—and are influenced by a diversity of individual, household and organizational factors. Although a wide range of methods have been proposed to define, monitor and evaluate food environments, few are tailored to school-aged children and adolescents. Here, we interrogate published literature on food metrics and methodologies for the characterization of food environments for school-aged children and adolescents living in low- and middle-income counties. We identify key priority actions and potential indicators for better monitoring and evaluation to galvanize policymaking to improve the healthiness of these interactions, which are so crucial to future adult well-being

The Food Systems Dashboard is a new tool to inform better food policy

The Food Systems Dashboard brings together extant data from public and private sources to help decision makers understand their food systems, identify their levers of change and decide which ones need to be pulled

Reverse thinking: taking a healthy diet perspective towards food systems transformations

Food systems that deliver healthy diets without exceeding the planet’s resources are essential to achieve the worlds’ ambitious development goals. Healthy diets need to be safe, accessible, and affordable for all, including for disadvantaged and nutritionally vulnerable groups such as of smallholder producers, traders, and consumers in low- and middle-income countries. Globally, food systems are experiencing rapid and drastic changes and are failing to fulfil these multiple duties simultaneously. The international community therefore calls for rigorous food systems transformations and policy solutions to support the achievement of healthy diets for all. Most strategies, however, are essentially supply- and market-oriented. Incorporation of a healthy diet perspective in food system transformation is essential to enable food systems to deliver not only on supplying nutritious foods but also on ensuring that consumers have access can afford and desire healthy, sustainable, and culturally acceptable diets. This paper argues that this should be guided by information on diets, dietary trends, consumer motives, and food environment characteristics. Transformational approaches and policies should also take into account the stage of food system development requiring different strategies to ensure healthier diets for consumers. We review current knowledge on drivers of consumer choices at the individual and food environment level with special emphasis on low- and middle income countries, discuss the converging and conflicting objectives that exist among multiple food-system actors, and argue that failure to strengthen synergies and resolve trade-offs may lead to missed opportunities and benefits, or negative unintended consequences in food system outcomes. The paper proposes a menu of promising consumer- and food-environment- oriented policy options to include in the food systems transformation agenda in order to shift LMIC consumer demand towards healthier diets in low- and middle income countries