Enabling healthy diets for all needs decisive steering and collective action
©FAO/Sirachia Arunrustigchai

Reshaping policies for healthy diets

Improving nutrition cannot be done without policymakers.
It is our job to get them there.

Technical advice and capacity strengthening are central to FAO's offer – for example, advice to governments on re-allocating budgets and providing targeted subsidies that favour access to healthy diets. To underpin this offer, the Organization and its partners have put together a range of analytical tools, modelling, and technical support with data collection and analysis.

SETTING NUTRITION GUIDELINES FOR SCHOOL MEAL PROGRAMMES

Formal education systems provide ideal platforms to improve the nutrition of millions of school-age children. And yet, programmes to that effect are far from universal; where they exist, they are frequently underfunded. Policymakers may lack clear guidance on how best to structure such programmes and put a variety of nutritious foods on children's plates.

To remedy this, FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) are helping countries collect and use data about what schoolchildren are eating; identify gaps in their diets; and make smart policy decisions to fine-tune school feeding and nutrition programmes. Part of the approach involves empowering children to speak up via different channels, including through semi-guided interviews.

FAO has meanwhile created an online, open-access school-food global hub that pools technical resources and guidance to support food and nutrition education. Countries from across the income spectrum, from Germany to Jordan and Saint Lucia, have joined the hub.

Multipronged policy support in Ethiopia

Homegrown school feeding

Despite broad support and funding, Ethiopia was struggling to make school meals a reality. Excessively complex public procurement rules made securing food from small local producers a challenge. FAO helped the government simplify its legal framework and revise procedures, allowing regional and local authorities to develop “homegrown” (or locally sourced) school feeding programmes. More progress is needed in setting standards for foods served or sold in schools. But the seeds have been sown for local food systems that benefit schoolchildren, their families and communities. Building demand for healthy diets – in this case, from within the school system – is one lever for systemic intervention by governments.

Modelling for healthy diets

Food security is commonly included in food and agriculture policies; healthy diets, as a singular objective, are not. Changing this is vital to achieve better nutrition. Ethiopia, with its more than 120 million people, is the second-largest country (after Nigeria) where FAO and partners were already implementing the MAFAP project: it uses optimization modelling to identify the most efficient reallocation of public spending to meet a variety of objectives related to agricultural transformation. Over the last year, these objectives have been amended to include the provision of least-cost healthy diets, worked out jointly by FAO and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute. Each included diet is particular to a population group and agroecological zone.

Least-cost healthy diets: a firm policy objective
©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

COUNTRY-LEVEL ROADMAPS TO REDUCE CHILD WASTING

Globally, over 13 million children under five suffer from severe wasting, also known as severe acute malnutrition: both terms describe the condition of children too thin for their height. Wasting may occur either because children fail to gain weight, or because they lose it. Severe wasting is the most lethal form of malnutrition: wasted children are up to 11 times more likely to die than well-nourished ones. It is, however, frequently reversible with adequate treatment. In 2022, FAO and other UN agencies launched the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting, supporting 23 countries – including the demographic powerhouses of Bangladesh, India and Nigeria – to develop national policy roadmaps to eradicate the phenomenon.

In northern Kenya, FAO has bundled nutrition education with emergency livestock programmes: this combination of milk and knowledge was associated with a 26 percent reduction in the risk of small arm circumference in children – one of the telltale signs of acute malnutrition.

Required citation:
FAO. 2024. The quest for healthy diets – FAO’s work to secure better nutrition. Rome https://doi.org/10.4060/cd1587en

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