The Food Systems Approach: Sustainable Solutions for a Sufficient Supply of Healthy Food

As well as food availability, dietary composition also entails sizable challenges. In total, 2 billion people suffer from a shortage of micronutrients. This mainly affects children in the first few years of life; worldwide a total of 159 million children younger than 5 suffer from stunted growth and 50 million children from wasting, while on average 19% of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa and 22% of those in the least developed countries are undernourished. 

In addition, more than 2 billion people are either overweight or obese (including 41 million children younger than 5). This figure is expected to be 3.3 billion in 2030. Increasingly, the world's population has begun eating a diet that is too sweet, too salty, and contains too much fat. Chronic diet-related diseases such as diabetes have become increasingly common, especially in low and middle-income countries. And poor nutrition exacerbates the health impacts of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles. Healthy food would therefore make a significant contribution to SDG 3 (good health and wellbeing). 

A major challenge for the food system is to ensure the production and consumption of sufficiently varied diets containing the right micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). Better health among the working population contributes to a healthy economy. The estimated impact of malnutrition on GDP is 11% per annum. The Global Nutrition Report 2016 states that investing 1 dollar in healthy food will yield 16 dollars for the economy (the sum of higher productivity in the labor market, lower absenteeism, and lower health costs).