As part of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, I attended the Public Forum, Action Track 1: Ensure Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All. I heard from Lawrence Haddad with Global Alliance For Improved Nutrition (GAIN), and Corinna Hawkes, Lead on the Working Group for Nutritious Foods.
Lawrence Haddad, Chair of Action Track 1 presented the group’s structure, to promote transparency, and encourage feedback on their projects. The leadership team has grown to 70, as more membership states have joined. The three working groups encompass: Zero Hunger, Nutritious Foods, and Food Safety, each working with Levers of Change in human rights, gender, innovation, and finance to come up with ideas and improve nutrition.
The team generate ideas within their working groups, google forms, and interacting with a range of stakeholders. The team then work on ideas in three simultaneous ways. Identifying candidate ideas, and assessing for potential impact, whilst identifying and building support for the idea, ensuring it is sustainable, and operationalising the idea, making it potentially actionable. Haddad outlined the ten ideas they are currently working on, including African Youth for Agricultural Transformation, Strengthening Land Governance, Wiping Out Wasting, and Diverse Diets for Young Children.
Corinna Hawkes, Lead on the Working Group for Nutritious Foods, highlighted how game changer ideas are necessary but must work on how to make that change, not just identifying the fundamentals that need to change. The aim should be game-changing in the context of people’s real lives, and be purposefully designed to change the rules of the game. These collective actions should then lead to a fundamental shift in the way food systems operate, offering benefits across food system outcomes.
A current problem, is that ‘unhealthy’ foods are affordable, appealing, and everywhere, unlike nutritious foods. This issue can be tackled in many ways, including equitable food marketing, creating more transparency around food and global coordination for food environment policies for healthier children.
An investment of mine, Aloha, aims to combat ‘unhealthy’ foods by introducing clean, organic plant-based snacking alternatives without sacrificing on taste, thereby boosting consumer nutrition. As an investor within the food industry I am excited to see the collaborations that materialise as a result of this public forum to boost awareness of the innovative solutions being developed by companies like Aloha to the issues surrounding global nutrition.
