Turning the tide      15/01/2023 by Sarah Pursey

and reduce diet-related non-communicable diseases.

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Indeed, despite declaring 2016–2025 as the ‘United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition’, the UN General Assembly’s efforts to bolster nutrition within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 have largely been crushed. According to a new report on global nutrition from the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, other health emergencies – together with the disruption of the food supply caused by intensified conflicts and climate change – impede progress towards ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms and achieving the health-related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Adult obesity continues to rise, the report goes on to note, with more than 1.9bn adults identified across the world as overweight or obese. Such a trend is concerning on multiple levels, as obesity – in addition to being a disease in its own right – is clearly also a major risk factor for other serious illnesses such as diabetes, liver and cardiovascular disease, plus certain cancers. “Nearly 3.1bn people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020,” Dr Tedros notes. “At the same time, up to 222m people in 53 countries or territories are expected to face acute food insecurity or worse conditions, with malnutrition remaining at critical levels.”

With WHO’s main task now that of tackling a dual dilemma – obesity and malnutrition, on a record-busting scale – the UN’s health body is focused on corporate engagement where and when it can collaborate on specific issues, and using “regulatory function to enforce” when it cannot engage business. Dr Tedros says he obviously prefers the former approach – i.e., corporate co-operation – whenever possible. Such was the case in 2019, when the food industry agreed to eliminate industrial trans fat by 2023, with population coverage of best-practice policies having since increased almost six-fold. Some 43 countries have implemented such policies for tackling trans fat in food, with 2.8bn people now protected globally. Despite substantial progress, it nonetheless still leaves 5bn worldwide at risk from the devastating health impacts of trans fat, with the global goal for its total elimination this year now looking like something of a pipe dream (p11).

WHO’s chief further noted that when it comes to salt and sugar content in food, a significant problem remains in terms of engaging companies on this matter. Lamentably, healthier foods are nearly three times more expensive per calorie than less healthy foods (in the UK at least, although a similar dynamic will invariably be in play elsewhere), meaning people switch away from purchasing healthy foods like fruit and veg when budgets are tight (p10).
Meanwhile, levels of hunger are now alarmingly high around the world, surpassing all previous records in 2021, with an additional 40m more people deemed acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance. Such eye-watering figures have led Dr Tedros to state he has “two prayers” for the world – one for more food on the table for everyone, the other for less unhealthy food. As WHO’s chief is keenly aware, turning the tide back in the right direction will, however, require more than prayers – namely, political will on a grand scale (and public funding in spades to support such resolve), combined with an unprecedented commitment from corporations to reduce waste and play their part in formulating the kind of healthy, nutritional products that can feed a better future.