Compendium of WHO and other UN guidance on health and environment
Guidance on safe and healthy food
- Food safety and the environment
- Healthy diets and the environment
Food safety and the environment
Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. Safe food is not contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria, parasites, viruses, toxins, chemicals and/or radionuclides. However, food can become contaminated at any point of production and distribution. A large proportion of foodborne disease incidents are caused by foods improperly or unhygienically prepared or mishandled at home, in food service establishments or markets.
Healthy diets and the environment
Access, intake and uptake to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. A healthy diet protects against malnutrition as well as NCDs such as diabetes, IHD, stroke and cancer.
With regard to health, much of the food that is consumed contains too little whole plant foods (fruits and vegetables) and too much added sugars and salt, saturated fats and trans-fatty acids. Shifting to more healthy diets would reduce a great disease burden mainly from NCDs.
With regard to the environment, current patterns of food production and consumption use much of the world’s resources on land and water and contribute significantly to climate and ecosystem change through for example deforestation, loss of biodiversity and GHG emissions. This is aggravated by the fact that about one third of food produced for human consumption is wasted.
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