2021 Articles

Global health has a stake in the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit

Schneider, Kate R; Fanzo, Jessica C.; Haddad, Lawrence; Moncayo, Jose Rosero

Good health requires healthy and nutritious food. In their current state, food systems are not providing access to sufficient, affordable, healthy, and safe food for all people. Worse, recent years have seen an explosive proliferation and active marketing of foods increasingly associated with negative health outcomes.At the same time, food systems are contributing to further environmental degradation that undermines the future continuity of food production and its quality and threatens human health. Food systems urgently need to be transformed to provide equitable access to healthy diets, produced in sustainable and resilient ways; the continuation of current trends is nearly guaranteed to be disastrous for humanity. Preserving past achievements in health and addressing remaining inequities depend on this food system transformation.