Hunger-Undernutrition Blog

Animal-Protein Alternatives for Food System Sustainability

By Janelle Cruz, Humanitas Global

We are in the midst of a ‘protein transition’: As incomes in the developing world rise, so does the consumption of meat with projections showing consumption of animal-based foods to increase by 80 percent by 2050. In the developed world, individuals are already overconsuming animal products, with one study indicating that all but 19 countries and territories were consuming more protein than average daily requirements in 2009. Livestock production is incredibly resource-intensive and responsible for nearly 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. While 795 million people suffer from hunger, a third of all calories produced globally are being fed to livestock. Animal-based foods are an ideal source of nutrition but it comes at a critical cost to the environment and the food system.

An ideal solution, detailed in Chapter Eight the 2016 Global Food Policy Report, includes shifting diets away from overconsumption of animal-based foods. Several start-up companies are on the rise in developing alternatives to animal protein, that may make a habit change more successful. Made from ingredients such as plants and insects, these newer swaps for protein may be innovative alternatives for populations where the provision of animal food sources can be difficult, and may be critical to sustainable food systems.

Plant burger, anyone? This is not your regular meatless veggie burger. Called “The Impossible Burger,” this burger patty claims to have the same taste, texture, and nutritional properties of meat.  Heme, an iron-containing molecule in blood that carries oxygen, is added to a combination of wheat, coconut oil, and potatoes to create a burger patty that smells, sizzles, and even “bleeds” like meat when cooking on the grill.  Similarly, the Beyond burger made from pea protein, also sizzles like real meat and ‘“bleeds’” with beet juice when cooked. These alternatives are focused on supporting dietary substitutions without a noticeable change. By targeting the ‘carnivore,’ even meat-lovers can contribute to more sustainable food systems with a nearly imperceptible food swap.

The Impossible Burger

 

A start-up called Exo is engineering protein bars made with dry-roasted milled cricket flour.  Like eggs, crickets are a complete protein source, and along with high concentrations of, fat, calcium, zinc, and other micronutrients, crickets contain more than double the amount of iron found in spinach. In a comparison of cricket flour to beef jerky, chicken, salmon, and eggs, cricket flour ranks the highest in protein content at 65%. Insects, including crickets, are also more environmentally friendly to produce. They produce fewer greenhouse gases, require less resources and often have higher feed-conversion rates.

The University of California, Berkeley has just introduced a new course where entrepreneurship and technology students will focus on developing plant-based meat alternatives. This course will specifically target seafood alternatives as a challenge in creating texture alternatives (a key element in the pleasure of eating is texture) and in addressing the vulnerable status of marine ecosystems. Sometime soon, there may be another meat-alternative on the market, courtesy of Berkeley students.

Environmental impact of meat-based diets courtesy of Sustainable Cities Collective

 

The ultimate goal is to create sustainable food systems. The world is failing to feed 785 million people, and another two million adequately, yet the world also needs to increase food production by 70 percent by 2050 to meet the projected calorie demand. The average daily protein requirement is 50 grams but on average, 126 out of 205 countries observed consumed over 60 grams of protein a day. If this population limits consumption of animal-based foods, our food system can provide nutrition and energy for those in need while ensuring resources and productivity for future populations. While these meat-alternatives are only one option, they represent a response to current dietary habits, which can be  stubborn and difficult behaviors to change. These alternatives further represent an inclusive solution to creating a sustainable food system for all.

Taking Stock: A Look at the Top Posts of 2016

By Janelle Cruz, Humanitas Global

Happy New Year!  In keeping with our annual tradition, we wanted to share our top blog posts of 2016!  As we embark into 2017, we want to continue sharing inspiring, innovative and current ideas from our team, as well as those of our fellow peers and colleagues.

We always love hearing from you and want to share your thoughts and experiences.  If you are interested in becoming our next top blog post, please reach out to us at humanitas@humanitasglobal.com

Highlights from 2016:

1.  World Breastfeeding Week 2016: A Look at the History of Breastfeeding and Breast-milk Substitutes

        During World Breastfeeding Week, we are taken on a tour of the history of breastfeeding and reminded of the important benefits breastfeeding offers children, mothers, and communities. Promoting breastfeeding is necessary to achieving the SDGs.

2.  World Water Day: Water Safety is a Key to Food Security

        This year’s World Water Day’s theme was “Better water, better jobs.” In this post, Tatiana LeGrand explores how clean water, proper hygiene, and the availability of sanitation facilities all play a significant role in nutrition safety.

3.  Full Stomachs, Better Nutrition: Boosting School Performance for the World’s Littlest Learners

        Tracy Pannozzo highlights the impact of malnutrition on a child’s motor and cognitive development. While inclusive, quality education is a goal for all children, inadequate nutrition can negate the impact of such opportunities.

4.  Front of Pack Food Labels: The Gateway to Better Nutrition

        The purpose of front pack food labels is to help consumers easily make healthful food choices while grocery shopping. Many varieties of front pack labels exist, but how helpful are they in making improved nutrition and dietary choices?

5.  Food Labels: The Key to a Nutritious Diet?

        As Savanna Henderson indicates in this post, the contents of a nutrition label can not only be confusing, but can be a major factor in contributing to unhealthy dietary habits and food waste.  Internationally defined categories of nutrition labeling and food standards are necessary in enforcing the guidelines related to the safety and quality of food.

Human Rights Day: A Cause Worth Celebrating Daily

By Eileen Little, Humanitas Global

December 10th marked 68 years since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1950, on the second anniversary of the Declaration’s ratification, the United Nations’ General Assembly established an annual Human Rights Day. Since then, the international community has celebrated Human Rights Day by holding campaigns, seminars, and activities to promote awareness for the 30 articles that define the basic rights each and every person is entitled to. And, more importantly, to continue to take a stand for people whose human rights are still not being met.

This year the theme of Human Rights Day is, “ Stand up for someone’s rights today”. The United Nations (UN) shared a few ideas for celebrating Human Rights Day together:

1. Get to know the 30 articles that make up the Declaration. Use social media to inform your friends and colleagues about the anniversary and what it stands for.
2. Use your voice when you see other’s rights at risk. This can be as simple as standing up to someone you see being bullied.
3. Get involved. Donate to an organization that supports human rights or join events celebrating human rights day.
4. Urge elected officials to uphold human rights

This year we are going to focus on Article 25, which focuses on adequate standards of living that all individuals should have access to, so they are able to maintain their own health and wellbeing: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

To dive deeper, how do we adequately define these measurements? What does it mean to have an adequate amount of food or have access to a home? And 68 years since the inception of these ideals, has the global community met these initiatives?

Food: The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights defines having adequate food in the following way:

The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement. Food must be available, accessible and adequate.

Today, some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy and active life. That's about one in nine people on earth. An additional two million suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, indicating a lack of adequate food and/or lack of access to adequate food.

Housing: The right to adequate housing include:

• Protection against forced evictions and the arbitrary destruction and demolition of one’s home;
• The right to be free from arbitrary interference with one’s home, privacy and family; and  The right to choose one’s residence, to determine where to live and to freedom of movement.
• The right to adequate housing contains entitlements.

Today well over one billion people are not adequately housed. Millions around the world live in life- or health-threatening conditions, in overcrowded slums and informal settlements, or in other conditions which do not uphold their human rights and their dignity. Further millions are forcibly evicted, or threatened with forced eviction, from their homes every year.  

Until all people have access to these human rights we must stand up, advocate for, and insist that more must be done. Human Rights Day should serve as a reminder to act for those lacking basic rights each and everyday. Whether it’s a focus on the right to food or medical care, find a way to use your voice for those who may not have an opportunity to advocate for themselves.   

Digging Deep for Climate Change Resilience in Agriculture

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

Agriculture is inherently vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which threatens current and future global food and nutrition security. Agriculture accounts one one-fifth of total emissions but it also holds immense potential for adaptation and mitigation to climate change while delivering sustainable food systems. At the 2015 Paris Agreement, 94 percent of all countries included agriculture in mitigation and/or adaptation contributions. One primary reason for the recognition of agriculture in climate change action can be attributed to soils role as one of the major carbon pools (following the lithosphere and oceans). This is also one of the primary aspects of the carbon cycle that can be controlled by human activity. The recently released 2016 State of Food and Agriculture Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Report enthusiastically recounts the role of soil: “Soils are pivotal in regulating emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. Appropriate land use and soil management lead to improved soil quality and fertility and can help mitigate the rise of atmospheric CO₂”.

Carbon farming and soil-friendly farming practices have become the calling card for climate change adaptation and mitigation for a simple reason: healthy, productive soils require carbon while a stable climate requires less carbon. Some of these practices have been well-known for some time but have not been adopted at the necessary scale, or have been discouraged by incentives and input subsidies that perpetuate unsustainable practices. No-till is one such practice.

Plowing has been practiced since 8000 BC to aerate the soil and disrupt the growth of weeds that would compete with the crop through burying crop residue and disrupting growth. Technologic advances in plow design led to agricultural expansion throughout the world, converting large tracts of land into cropland. Despite the penalties witnessed during the Dust Bowl, global food production with tillage has continued to grow, reducing the prevalence of natural habitats by more than 50 percent while continuously disrupting the soil. In addition to transforming natural habitats into agriculture and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, tilling reduces the integrity and stability of the soil, increases the risk of erosion, run-off and degradation while allowing carbon to oxidize back into the atmosphere.

The concept of no-till agriculture resonates around minimizing soil disruption through obviating plowing of fields. Every year, roughly 60 gigatons of carbon enters the soil organic carbon sink as decomposing plant matter. Nearly 61 to 62 gigatons of carbon are lost from this pool as soil organic matter is oxidized by the atmosphere through tillage and erosion. Instead of plowing, farmers leave crop residue on fields after the harvest where it acts as a mulch to protect soil from erosion and a source of organic matter. This mulch reduces evaporation, which promotes water conservation and can be extremely useful in arid areas where water availability is limited. Crop residue furthermore provides soil organisms a source of food resulting in increased diversity of soil flora and fauna. Organisms like worms create channels in the soil that foster root growth and alongside the lack of tilling, contribute to a more stable internal structure that is resilient to environmental stressors and improves capacity for growth.

Despite all the benefits associated with no-till, adoption has been low for a number of reasons:

• The specialized seeders needed can be prohibitively expensive.
• In developing countries, crop residues are often already utilized as fuel and animal feed, leaving nothing to mulch the crop with.
• Different pest species can arise during a shift from tilled cropland to no-till requiring further adaptation and planning.
• Some no-till crops require a heavier reliance on herbicides and fungicides as the increased moisture promotes increased growth.
• Expected changes from tilled to no-till can sometimes take years or decades to reveal themselves depending on the soil, region and other biophysical attributes. During this time productivity and yields could be reduced decreasing the calories and income available to the farmer.
• There are also questions around the rates of soil organic carbon sequestration that have been researched and published for the past 20 years.

Under the right conditions, no-till is a climate-smart agricultural technique that supports food and nutrition security while providing resilience to climate change. Such a practice deserves more attention as leaders at the 22^nd Session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) focus on action needed to achieve priorities set out in the Paris Agreement. Countries with agriculture included in adaptation and/or mitigation contributions must develop action plans with clear objectives to achieve climate targets. Beyond COP22, there needs to be a refocus on sustainable and climate-smart agricultural practices that can be scaled and adequately supported by policy and investments.

It remains clear that soil management is key to agricultural adaptation and mitigation. In a companion post, I will look more closely at additional agricultural practices that support soil carbon sequestration.

The Role of Traditional Knowledge in Eliminating Hunger and Malnourishment

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

For thousands of years humans have exploited living organisms through food, shelter, medicine and clothing. In doing so many peoples have developed a traditional knowledge (TK) revolving around the plant and animal species located in their environment including their direct and indirect uses. There is no internationally recognized definition of TK, but it commonly refers to knowledge, skills and practices confined to a group of people, passed through generations orally and experientially, often forming part of the cultural or spiritual identity. Though TK is responsible for the discovery of morphine, reserpine and aspirin, it is often dismissed as lacking scientific value or for its association with spiritual or religious identities.

Ernest Sirolli, founder of the Sirolli Foundation, further characterizes this rejection of TK. He shares his experiences doing aid work in Zambia, teaching people to grow vegetables. He shares, “Instead of asking them why they were not growing anything, we simply said, ‘Thank God we’re here.’” Upon harvest time, hippos from the neighboring river devoured everything, revealing what the community would have shared if asked why they didn’t grow food. This, he says, is the paternalistic and patronizing nature of aid work. Rather than enter a dialogue with communities to learn and collaborate together, a majority of development and aid action is influenced by outsider information, chosen for the scientific and expert credibility.

Today, roughly 795 million people go hungry while 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, a failure the world will see exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Without climate change, and with continued economic progress, most regions are projected to see a decline in the number of people at risk of hunger by 2050. The knowledge and experiences of local communities cannot be ignored when it comes to ensuring food and nutrition security, especially in light of the negative impacts of climate change. There are numerous examples that indicate the credibility and value of local communities’ knowledge.

The Anasazi Indians of the northwest U.S. were at one time hunter-gatherers but the introduction of maize plants from Mesoamerica led them to become an agrarian society. They quickly realized maize alone lacked a full spectrum of nutrition, most likely through the onset of disease caused by nutritional deficiency, and began to farm beans to substitute the missing nutrient lysine, an essential amino acid. Today, biotechnology has allowed plant breeders to design varieties of corn that produce lysine and other amino acids important to human health, along with qualities to enhance productivity and yields.

Though the opportunities are vast, there are risks involved with a reliance on a single solution such as use of a biotech crop. A single genotype corn that was introduced in the southeastern U.S. was wiped out by a fungal disease in the 1950’s.  Plant breeders were forced to return to ancestral stocks to obtain a disease-resistant species. Many of these ancestral stocks are cultivated by indigenous peoples, who maintain knowledge on the medicinal and nutritional aspects of each species of plant. Globally, agronomic communities are familiar with regionally specific species well-suited for the local environmental characteristics. If that knowledge is lost, a solution to nutrition and food production in the aftermath of the impacts of climate change may also be lost.

Already, TK has been shown to offer solutions to food security where scientific knowledge has failed. Despite foreign aid donor efforts in the 1960’s and 70’s, land in the Central Plateau region of Burkina Faso was severely degraded. Local farmers were left with barren land or the choice to move on landless. In an attempt to save the land, local farmers started experimenting with traditional planting pits, known as zai. Small holes were dug throughout the field and along with the seed, filled with organic material. The practice of zai supports improved water infiltration and soil health, and farmers began to see yields on soil that had previously produced nothing. This system was developed locally based on indigenous knowledge to increase drought resistance and improve yields in similar regions.

The Sustainable Development Goals pledge to leave no one behind, but beyond ensuring the Goals reach every segment of society, we simply cannot do it without the participation of everyone. It is time to give local communities a level platform for participation in development and resiliency-building efforts. To do so, it is critical that their knowledge, experiences, and skills are acknowledged and called upon for solutions to some of our most formidable challenges.

Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition and Climate Change: Recommendations from the Committee on World Food Security

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

We repeatedly hear about and discuss the need for a multi-stakeholder, inclusive approach to achieving food and nutrition security. With a renewed focus on nutrition stemming from last year’s plenary, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is an intergovernmental forum doing just that. Members are comprised of Member States of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), The World Food Programme (WFP), and non-Member States of FAO that are Member States of the United Nations. Participants in CFS include representatives from UN agencies, civil society and non-governmental organizations, private sector associations and philanthropic foundations, international agricultural research systems as well as international and regional financial institutions. These stakeholders participate in Plenaries and intersessional work alongside Member States.

A primary objective of CFS is to address the knowledge gap related to food and nutrition security so that policy recommendations can be formulated. Following this, CFS creates policy tools that all stakeholders can apply to their work. One such product is the Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition (GSF). Though addressed to decision and policy-makers, the GSF provides an overarching framework, guidance and recommendations for food and nutrition security actions, adopted by CFS plenaries.

From the CFS blog, "Sustainability is nutrition for the environment"

The 43^rd plenary, on the theme of “Sustainable Food Systems, Nutrition and Climate Change”, is taking place in Rome, Italy until October 21. In line with the CFS mandate to provide policy tools and promote policy convergence, the 43^rd sessions will focus on identifying areas of attention and adoption of policy recommendations related to “Sustainable Agricultural Development for Food Security and Nutrition, including the Role of Livestock”, “Connecting Smallholders to Markets”, and “Urbanization, Rural Transformation and Implications for Food Security and Nutrition”. This year, a decision will be made on endorsement of the fifth version of the GSF, which includes policy recommendations on Water for Food Security and Nutrition and reference to the Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises.

From the CFS blog, "Cities and food: the future of agriculture development"

The CFS event blog hosts a collection of blogs related to this year’s theme including a look at plant health, urban agriculture in Nairobi, the New Nordic Diet, and more. The plenary is available live here. Don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter using #CFS43.

The 2016 Borlaug Dialogue: Nutrition’s Role in Food Security

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

Globally, nearly two billion people suffer from micronutrient malnutrition, suffering from impaired growth and development, increased risk of disease and death from infection, preventable blindness and brain damage, and more. The Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, is reputed to have said, “Let food be thy medicine”. This quote is symbolic of the work and accomplishment of the four World Food Prize laureates, Dr. Maria Andrade, Dr. Jan Low, Dr. Robert Mwanga, and Dr. Howarth Bouis, being honored this year. Biofortification, breeding vitamins and nutrients into staple crops, unites the four laureates who have developed crops to tackle micronutrient malnutrition. It is with these crops, orange-fleshed sweet potato, vitamin A cassava and maize, iron beans and pearl millet, and zinc rice and wheat, that malnutrition and its’ associated impacts on health and well-being will be extinguished from recognition for future generations.

We are honored to be attending this year’s Borlaug Dialogue as it marks the 30^th anniversary of the World Food Prize, established by Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, as well as the anniversary of Dr. Borlaug’s first trip to Africa to launch a Green Revolution. Joined by international leaders, policy makers, farmers, scientific, academic and development experts, and leaders from agribusiness and non-governmental organizations, the Borlaug Dialogue will continue to address the obstacles standing in the way of a food and nutrition secure world.

Nutrition will be a prime topic this year, as a critical element of food security. In addition there will be discussions on issues of national security and crisis on food security, the role of the private sector in improved nutrition and climate resilience, African women’s role in agricultural transformation, and the availability of a nutritious global diet, among others.

If you cannot be in Iowa for the Borlaug Dialogue, be sure to tune in online for the webcast of all the symposium sessions and follow along on Twitter at @ZHCommunity and @WorldFoodPrize with #FoodPrize16.

Our Childen, Our Future: A Call to Action to Invest in Early Childhood Development

By Nabeeha M. Kazi, President & CEO, Humanitas Global                                                              

The 2016 Lancet Early Childhood Development Series, with new scientific evidence that builds off of the 2007 Lancet Series on the same topic, launches this week.  It comes at a time of renewed international attention on early childhood development (ECD), and doing right by the world's children and their families.

Investments in ECD have been growing, with US$1.7 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank and US$3.3 billion from Work Bank supporting more than 423 projects around the world. Since 2000, publications on the subject of ECD have steadily increased and the number of countries with national multi-sectoral ECD policies increased from seven to 68 in 2014.  The ECD Series points to evidence that shows that the cost of not acting on combating early childhood risks, such as stunting, extreme poverty, violence and physical and emotional abuse, can lead to poor health, malnutrition, difficulties in learning, and a reduction in future incomes by 26 percent. 

Read the full post here and watch the launch webcast at 2 pm US-ET on Wednesday, October 5.

 

The Cost of Eating Healthy

By Jorge Rojas, Humanitas Global

The most recent post of our overnutrition series, “Temptations, Peer Pressures and Ignorance – The Influence of our Sociocultural Environment on our Weight”, explored the ways in which our surroundings contribute to unhealthy diets and lifestyles. With fast-food chains on every corner, sweet and salty goodies surrounding the check-out lane at supermarkets, ads for fast and junk food on television, and magazines and billboards showcasing calorie-dense foods, it is clear that junk food is readily available  and that we are prone to consume it unless we make the conscious decision to avoid it. Average food consumption has increased from 2,360 calories per person per day in the mid-1960s to 2,800 in the late 1990s and is projected to increase to 3,050 by 2030.

Building-on from the latter, our final post on the etiology of overnutrition will take on the economic food environment, analyzing factors such as food quality and prices and how these affect consumption. In sum, “demographic and behavioral changes have led to a nutrition transition with altered dietary trends towards ‘low-cost, high-calorie but nutrient-poor’ foods”.

Research has shown that the main influences on food choice are taste, cost and convenience, with health and variety playing a lesser role. This means that the palatability, selling price and easiness of buying and preparing food are the leading factors influencing our choices on food consumption with food diversity and our concerns relating to the effect of food on chronic disease, nutrition and body weight are secondary factors when we consider our food purchases.

       

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

The literature has noted that wealth and education significantly contribute to our decision-making process when choosing tasty, cost-effective and convenient foods. Older and wealthier consumers have displayed higher quality diets characterized by more variety and better quality meats, seafood, vegetables and fruit. Low-income families were found to more commonly choose “low-cost meats, inexpensive grains, added sugars and added fats”. A study in South Africa revealed that disadvantaged communities with low levels of education have increased consumption of “cheap processed and packaged food” and prefer eating “fried food and chicken with skin as a result of inadequate nutrition knowledge”. Moreover, South Africans “are progressively changing their diets” from the traditional high fiber and carbohydrate dense foods to food products rich with saturated fat, added sugar and refined carbohydrates. Consequently, such communities experienced negative health outcomes such as an increase in obesity rates and non-communicable diseases. These findings confirm a relationship between socio-economic status and increase in overnutrition.

The primary issue is the convenience of unhealthy diets in terms of short-term costs and time.

Studies conducted in Australia, Canada and the European Union found that eating healthy costs approximately $1.54 more per day for every 2,000 calories consumed. These studies compared the amount of fat or sugar in similar products and compared whole grain versus refined carbohydrate versions. A 2014 Cambridge University study in the UK revealed that eating healthy costs three times as much as consuming unhealthy food. To make matters worse, the study also argued that the price gap will continue to widen. Researchers found that 1,000 calories made up of healthy food products such as yogurt, vegetables and lean salmon cost an average of £7.49 in 2012, whereas 1,000 calories made up from unhealthy food products such as pizza, hamburgers and donuts cost an average of £2.50. The 2012 £4.99 price gap between the two mentioned calorie baskets increased from £3.88 in 2002 and is expected to continue to grow. Families ‘living on a budget’ tend to gravitate towards foods that give them the biggest ‘bang for their buck’, meaning the most calories per dollar, such as fruit flavored drinks versus fruit juice. Furthermore, the price of healthy food is increasing so quickly that “vegetables and fruits are rapidly becoming luxury goods”.

    

Ushealthykids.org

Nutritious fast-food competitive concepts have emerged to try and promote healthy eating at a reasonable price among communities. For example a 440 calorie salad containing baby spinach, kale, tofu, broccoli, beets, quinoa among a few other vegetables runs $9.25 while a freshly juiced kale, celery, collard greens, Swiss chard, lemon and ginger juice goes for $10 in New York City. Even though a fast-food hamburger or a $1 pizza slice are cheaper options, healthy eating initiatives are raising awareness on healthy food choices and promoting more diverse and nutritious diets.

Unfortunately, the economic advantages of poor dietary habits disappear when viewed over the lifespan of an individual. Obese adults in the U.S. spend approximately 42 percent more on direct healthcare costs than adults who are not overweight and obesity accounted for about 21 percent of the national health spending in 2005. In addition, studies have shown that obese 18 year old men grow up to earn 16 percent less than those who are of a normal weight (BMI from 25 to 30). The obesity “penalty” of 16 percent corresponds to approximately three years of education, similar to a university bachelor’s degree in the UK. The reason behind such a statistic, according to researchers, is that “non-cognitive factors” like motivation and popularity have a strong relationship with “success in the labor market”. Those who are overweight and obese acquire less non-cognitive skills as they are, for example, less likely to join sports teams or even face discrimination from teachers and peers. A circular relationship between poverty and overnutrition is apparent; however, further research is required in order to prove it.

We ought to raise awareness about healthy food choices and the threat junk foods pose on our health and wellbeing. People must learn about shopping for, preparing and cooking nutrient-rich food products. One trend, exploding throughout the United States are meal-delivery services. Healthy, nutritious, pre-measured ingredients are delivered with step-by-step instructions on preparation, making healthy eating easy. In some instances, healthy food products are available but not utilized, especially in rural communities where some fruits and vegetables naturally grow but are not consumed because people dislike their taste and flavor or do not know how to prepare and consume them. We have the power to make choices about what we eat and a healthier lifestyle can start by making the conscious decision to avoid calorie-dense, processed, and ‘junk’ meals and fast food.

Overnutrition is an opportunity to promote collaborative efforts as we all have the capacities and potential in our own ways to promote healthier diets and lifestyles for all.

The Decade of Action on Nutrition: Invigorating Efforts towards a Zero Hunger World

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

Along with endorsement of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action of the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025) proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on 1 April 2016 calls for accelerated global action to achieve an end to hunger and malnutrition within the Sustainable Development Agenda and framed by the Rome Declaration. More specifically, the resolution catalyzes governments to develop, set and commit to national nutrition targets for 2025.The Framework for Action further calls on Member States to act across the following six pillars for nutrition action based on commitments made in the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and recommendations within the ICN2 Framework for Action:

• Sustainable food systems for healthy diets
• Aligned health systems providing universal coverage of essential nutrition actions
• Social protection and nutrition education
• Trade and investment for improved nutrition
• Enabling food and breastfeeding environments
• Review, strengthen and promote nutrition governance and accountability

Integral to implementation of the Decade of Action on Nutrition is utilization of existing resources and institutions and participation by governments and relevant stakeholders. Partners from all sectors, civil society, private, and academia, are invited to support nutrition commitments through evidence-informed advocacy and through collective work across sectors and constituencies. Accountability mechanisms with opportunities to assess progress towards commitments will also be important to keep commitments on-track.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) were identified as leaders of execution of the Decade, in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with involvement of coordination mechanisms such as the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) and multi-stakeholder platforms such as the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

The Decade of Action on Nutrition is a commitment to action on sustainable development, with nutrition and food security as the crux, at the highest level for the next 10 years. Through multisectoral collaboration and coordination, the Decade will spur progress towards a food and nutrition secure world for all.