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Add to Preferred SourcesAt the global World Food Day ceremony speakers called for bolder and faster action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets available and affordable for all.
This year’s World Food Day – with the theme “Our actions are our future. Healthy diets for a #ZeroHunger world” – takes place in the context of rising global hunger but also increasing overweight and obesity. FAO and its partners believe that affordable solutions to reduce all forms of malnutrition exist, but they require greater global commitment and action.
FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu welcomed an announcement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres of the convening of a UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 as part of the Decade of Action to deliver the SDGs.
In his opening remarks, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu warned how “hunger and malnutrition will be major barriers to achieving the SDGs by 2030 if we do not act now!”
The FAO chief stressed the importance of collaboration and the role everyone needs to play – from governments, food companies, the public sector, research institutions to consumers – to make progress towards enabling healthy diets for all, and to halt and hopefully reverse the current trend of rising hunger, overweight and obesity.
“We need a strong political will and commitment. We need to invest in nutrition and for nutrition. We need to walk hand-in-hand and build healthy and sustainable food systems,” added the FAO Director-General.
The FAO chief announced the UN agency’s biennial theme for 2020-2021 – Promoting healthy diets and preventing all forms of malnutrition – and reaffirmed FAO’s commitment to the global goal of ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.
During his remarks, the FAO Director-General stressed that there are over 820 million hungry people in the world. He noted, however, that while the total number of those chronically undernourished has been increasing in recent years, the rate is decreasing compared to total population of the planet.
Qu also underscored that over 2 billion adults, and nearly 380 million children and adolescents, are overweight or obese. This is because our current food systems are failing to ensure food security for all and deliver on healthy diets whilst contributing to environmental degradation.
To address this situation, FAO calls for: better incentives for the world’s agricultural producers; easier-to-understand and more comprehensive food labels and responsible advertising to help consumers choose healthier diets; more sustainable trade with clear rules; and a push to think of nutrition as part of food safety.
The private sectors should also re-formulate products to make them more nutritious whilst food companies that produce nutritious foods could be given incentives to make their products more accessible and affordable.
Original source: FAO
Published on 16 October 2019