Food Systems for Health

A food system includes all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, such as socio-economic and environmental outcomes.

At the root of many of the world’s most pressing threats to human, animal and planetary health, are unhealthy, inequitable and unsustainable food systems. Around 11 million deaths annually are caused by unhealthy diets. Our diets have become the leading contributor to global environmental degradation, affecting land, water and oceans, biodiversity, our climate and our air quality.

Food systems may also affect health by facilitating the spread of common bacteria and germs from animals to humans and between human populations. The use of antibiotics in livestock breeding and aquaculture contributes to drug-resistant microbes that threaten human health

We need to transform food systems to:

• lower the cost of nutritious foods for consumers,
• increase the availability and affordability of healthy diets,
• ensure a fair price for the producer, while reflecting the true costs on environment, health and livelihoods

Achieving this could: help prevent the double burden of malnutrition (the co-existence of undernutrition along with overweight and obesity, or diet-related noncommunicable diseases e.g. diabetes, within individuals, households and populations); lower health costs related to unhealthy diets; lower food waste and the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions; and  advance progress on all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals in this Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025).  WHO is working to advance food systems transformation for health through the priority policy actions detailed below, as well as through the outcomes of the UN Food Systems Summit including the Coalition of Action for Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems for Children and All (HDSFS).