Food System Innovations for Healthier Diets in Low and Middle-Income Countries

Malnutrition in all its forms is a major challenge everywhere in the world, and particularly in low and middle income countries. To reduce malnutrition, innovations in food systems are needed to both provide sufficient options for consumers to obtain diets with adequate nutritional value, and to help consumers make conscious and unconscious choices to choose healthier diets. A potential solution to this challenge is food systems innovations designed to lead to healthier diets. In this paper, we lay out a multidisciplinary framework for both identifying and analyzing innovations in food systems that can lead to improvements in the choices available to consumers and their diets from a health perspective. The framework identifies entry points for the design of potential food systems innovations, highlighting potential synergies, feedback, and tradeoffs within the food system. The paper concludes by providing examples of potential innovations and describes future research that can be developed to support the role of food systems in providing healthier diets

Seasonal food availability calendar for improved diet quality and nutrition: Methodology guide

This guide presents a participatory approach to map seasonal food availability in a locality. Seasonality is one of the key factors in determining food availability, especially of perishable foods like fruits and vegetables. Information on seasonal food availability can be used as an entry point to understand local dynamics related to food and nutrition security and to design and develop projects and activities that, through a food systems approach, ultimately aim at the empowerment of local communities to manage and use local agrobiodiversity for improved nutrition and health. This guidebook provides advice on how to prepare for and implement data collection on seasonal food availability. It also provides guidance on how to use the data collected to develop food availability calendars and nutrition education materials to teach consumers about seasonally-available, nutrient-dense local foods. The approach, involving data collection in focus groups, enables a rapid assessment of diversity and seasonality in a locality that can capture food from multiple sources such as local cultivation, wild sourcing, and markets. The data collected correspond to perceived seasonal availability, which can be verified by direct observation depending on project needs. This guidebook targets non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research organizations and development agencies, while the methodology described can be adopted by anyone interested in mapping seasonal food availability

Database of cultivated fleshy fruits

Database was created from the Mansfeld's Encyclopedia of Agricultural and Horticultural crops and integrated with variables on: 1) life form of the species, according to the Raunkiær system for plant classification, and 2)Google Scholar research results between 1998 and 2018 for the specie

Food system innovations for healthier diets in low and middle-income countries

Malnutrition in all its forms is a major challenge everywhere in the world, and particularly in low and middle income countries. To reduce malnutrition, innovations infood systems are needed to both provide sufficient options for consumers to obtain diets with adequate nutritional value, and to help consumer make conscious and unconscious choices to choose healthier diets. a potential solution to this challenge is food systems innovations designed to lead to healthier diets. In this paper,m we lay out a multidisciplinary framework for both identifying and analyzing innovations in food systems that can lead to improvements in the choices available to consumers and their diets from a health perspective. The framework identifies entry points for the design of potential food systems innovations, highlighting potential synergies, feedback, and tradeoffs within the food system. The paper concludes by providing examples of potential innovations and describes future reserach that can be developed to support the role of food systems in providing healthier diets

Food system innovations for healthier diets in low and middle-income countries

Malnutrition in all its forms is a major challenge everywhere in the world, and particularly in low and middle income countries. To reduce malnutrition, innovations infood systems are needed to both provide sufficient options for consumers to obtain diets with adequate nutritional value, and to help consumer make conscious and unconscious choices to choose healthier diets. a potential solution to this challenge is food systems innovations designed to lead to healthier diets. In this paper,m we lay out a multidisciplinary framework for both identifying and analyzing innovations in food systems that can lead to improvements in the choices available to consumers and their diets from a health perspective. The framework identifies entry points for the design of potential food systems innovations, highlighting potential synergies, feedback, and tradeoffs within the food system. The paper concludes by providing examples of potential innovations and describes future reserach that can be developed to support the role of food systems in providing healthier diets

Local solutions for sustainable food systems: The contribution of orphan crops and wild edible species

Calls for a global food system transformation and finding more sustainable ways of producing healthier, safe and nutritious food for all have spurred production approaches such as sustainable intensification and biofortification with limited consideration of the copious amounts of orphan crops, traditional varieties and wild edible species readily available in many countries, mostly in and around smallholder farmers’ fields. This paper explores the potential role of locally available; affordable and climate-resilient orphan crops, traditional varieties and wild edible species to support local food system transformation. Evidence from Brazil, Kenya, Guatemala, India, Mali, Sri Lanka and Turkey is used to showcase a three-pronged approach that aims to: (i) increase evidence of the nutritional value and biocultural importance of these foods, (ii) better link research to policy to ensure these foods are considered in national food and nutrition security strategies and actions, and (iii) improve consumer awareness of the desirability of these alternative foods so that they may more easily be incorporated in diets, food systems and markets. In the seven countries, this approach has brought about positive changes around increasing community dietary diversity and increasing market opportunities for smallholder growers, as well as increased attention to biodiversity conservation