Achieving Zero Hunger by 2030, a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, requires resilient food systems capable of securely feeding billions. This article introduces the Food Systems Resilience Score (FSRS), a novel framework that adapts a proven resilience measurement approach to the context of food systems. The FSRS builds on the success of the Community Flood Resilience Measurement Tool, which has been used in over 110 communities, by applying its five capitals (natural, human, social, financial, and manufactured) and four qualities (robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity) framework to food systems. We define food system resilience as the capacity to ensure adequate, appropriate, and accessible food supply to all, despite various disturbances and unforeseen disruptions. The FSRS measures resilience across multiple dimensions using carefully selected existing indicators, ensuring broad applicability and comparability. Our methodology includes rigorous technical validation to ensure reliability, including optimal coverage analysis, stability checks, and sensitivity testing. By providing standardized metrics and a comprehensive assessment of food system resilience, this framework not only advances research but also equips policymakers with valuable tools for effective interventions. The FSRS enables comparative analysis between countries and temporal tracking of resilience changes, facilitating targeted strategies to build and maintain resilient national food systems. This work contributes to the global effort toward long-term food security and sustainability.

Although current estimates suggest that global food production is enough to meet nutritional needs, there are still significant challenges with equitable distribution(1). Tackling these disparities is essential for achieving global nutrition security now and in the future. This study uses the DELTA Model® to analyse global nutrient supply dynamics at national resolution and address nutritional shortfalls in specific countries(2). By examining the distribution of food commodities and nutrients in 2020, we project the future food and nutrient production needs for 2050 to ensure adequate global supply. Our findings indicate that while some nutrients are sufficiently supplied on a global scale, many countries face significant national deficiencies in essential nutrients such as vitamins A, B12, B2, potassium, and iron. Addressing these gaps will require substantial increases in nutrient supply or redistribution. For example, a 1% increase in global protein, targeted at countries with insufficient protein, could close the 2020 gaps. However, if current consumption patterns persist, the global food system will need a 26% increase in production by 2050 to accommodate population growth and changing consumption patterns. Our study developed a framework for exploring future production scenarios. This involves reducing surplus national nutrient supply linearly over decades while simultaneously increasing production of undersupplied nutrients. This framework provides a more practical assessment of future needs, transitioning from idealized production scenarios to realistic projections. Our study investigated a potential future for nutrient supply to meet minimum requirements by 2050. Calcium and vitamin E are crucial, and production must be increased to address significant gaps, given their severe deficiencies in 2020. Energy and fibre production will be required to peak between 2030 and 2040 before stabilizing back near 2020 levels. Predicted changes in nutrient supply from 2020 to 2050 vary: while calcium and vitamin E will need to increase, phosphorus, thiamine and the indispensable amino acids can decrease without compromising global nutrition with only minor redistribution. These results are essential for determining the food supply required to achieve adequate global nutrient supply in the future. Incorporating these insights into global food balance models will provide key stakeholders with evidence, refine future projections, and inform policy decisions aimed at promoting sustainable healthy diets worldwide.

Systems thinking is deeply rooted in history, as far back as Aristotle. However, it has only relatively recently reemerged as an approach to help us understand and intervene in health and food systems. This is particularly salient, given its impact on environmental and population health. Whilst global food is abundant, many people cannot access affordable, healthy and culturally appropriate food. On the other hand, foods of low nutrient density are widely available. Food systems are complex and require complex thinking and approaches that allow us to consider the influence of multiple factors and how the might system respond to change. In turn, this enables the identification of ‘leverage’ points, where policies or interventions are most likely to have a sustained impact. The Foresight obesity map inspired others to adopt systems approaches to help understand the broader social, economic and environmental determinants of obesity to support intervention/policy development. Evaluation of these requires a consideration of complexity to explore why intervention goals may or may not have been successful and how relationships between components or approaches can be enhanced to support implementation and thereby increase the potential for effectiveness. Overall, approaches to understand, intervene, govern and evaluate food systems must themselves be sufficiently complex, or will ultimately be destroyed by the system it seeks to improve. This review paper aims to introduce readers to the application of systems approaches in research within the context of food systems and health, including its traditional/historical origins.

Low vegetable consumption among school-age children and adolescents puts them at risk of micronutrient malnutrition and non-communicable diseases. There is a dearth of synthesised literature on vegetable intake and interventions to promote increased consumption among this age group in West Africa. This study pooled evidence on vegetable consumption and interventions to promote vegetable consumption among school-age children and adolescents (6–19 years) in West Africa. Quantitative and qualitative studies from 2002 to 2023 were electronically searched in PubMed, African Journals Online (AJOL) and Google Scholar databases. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses system was adhered to in reporting this review (PROSPERO ID: CRD42023444444). The Joanna Briggs Institute critical evaluation tool was used to appraise the quality of studies. Forty (40) studies met the search criteria out of n 5080 non-duplicated records. Meta-analysis was not possible due to high heterogeneity. Low vegetable consumption expressed in frequency or amounts was recorded among school-age children and adolescents in the reviewed studies. Intervention studies were mostly among adolescents; the most common type of intervention was the use of nutrition education. Insufficient evidence and high heterogeneity of studies reflect the need for more high-quality interventions using globally identified standards but applied contextually. School-age children appear to be an under-served population in West Africa with regard to nutrition interventions to promote vegetable consumption. There is a need for multi-component intervention studies that encourage vegetable consumption as a food group. Gardening, parental involvement, gamification and goal setting are promising components that could improve the availability, accessibility and consumption of vegetables.

Food systems in Africa are under pressure from climate change, conflicts, health pandemics such as COVID-19 and rising food prices. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted weaknesses in global food systems and indeed Africa’s was not spared. Although COVID-19 mortality and morbidity in Africa were relatively low in comparison to other regions, the containment measures employed by countries amplified a rather dire situation. Disruptions were seen in livelihoods, food value chains, increases in food prices and loss of income. These changes affected access to nutritious foods. A resilient food system that can withstand and recover from disruption and shocks will be important for ensuring access to healthy diets for all. This review paper assesses the state of food insecurity and malnutrition situation pre-COVID-19 and the impact of COVID-19 on Africa’s food systems and access to healthy diet. To put Africa on a path to accelerated recovery, a resilient and sustainable food system will be crucial. The following recommendations are made: (i) increasing agriculture productivity, with special attention to the foods that contribute to healthy diets – fruits and vegetables, and animal source foods (ii) promoting the production and consumption of nutritious African traditional and indigenous foods (iii) transforming Africa’s food systems to be gender-sensitive (iv) investing in well-targeted social protection programmes (v) supporting food environments that protect healthy diets and (vi) employing data and information to monitor food systems transformation.

Overweight and obesity now impact one-third of the entire adult population globally, and play a role in the development of 3 of the 4 more common causes of death. Accountability systems for obesity prevention centring on food environment policies and health system strengthening have been vital for raising awareness to the lack of progress in prevention. However, health systems have struggled to prevent and treat obesity – in part because critical food systems reforms largely lay outside the mandate of health sectors and with government agencies for agriculture, industry, infrastructure, trade and investment, and finance. In this commentary we highlight aspects of food systems that are driving poor diets and obesity, and demonstrate a powerful but largely overlooked opportunity for accountability mechanisms for obesity that better address food systems as a main driver. We draw on lessons generated in the Pacific Islands Region where they have demonstrated remarkable commitment to obesity prevention through food system reforms, and the adoption of accountability systems that bring leaders to account on these. We make recommendations for accountability mechanisms that facilitate greater cooperation of food systems sectors on obesity and NCD prevention.

Oceania is currently facing a substantial challenge: to provide sustainable and ethical food systems that support nutrition and health across land and water. The Nutrition Society of Australia and the Nutrition Society of New Zealand held a joint 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting on ‘Nutrition and Wellbeing in Oceania’ attended by 408 delegates. This was a timely conference focussing on nutrition challenges across the Pacific, emphasising the importance of nutrition across land and water, education settings, women’s health and gut health. Cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary and collaborative research was presented in a 4-day programme of keynote presentations, workshops, oral and poster sessions, breakfast and lunch symposiums and early career researcher sessions. The conference highlighted the importance of collaboration between nations to address the challenge facing nutrition and wellbeing across Oceania. A systems approach of collaboration among scientists, industry and government is vital for finding solutions to this challenge.

Awareness of agricultural climate impacts is growing. In the European Union (EU), the agricultural sector is responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to receive considerable EU budgetary support. A large share of agricultural emissions is linked to livestock husbandry, a sector the direct and indirect climate impacts of which the EU's ‘green’ agricultural policies have historically ignored. This blind spot extends to the sizeable global deforestation footprint from EU livestock feed imports that remains unaddressed, despite the EU's aspired status as a global climate leader and major global agricultural market player. This article benchmarks the evolution of EU agri-climate legal and policy developments, using livestock emissions as a case study to highlight the importance of learning from the successes and failures of the EU experience, to realize future attempts to tackle global agricultural emissions.

Scientific consensus links dietary choices to health outcomes, highlighting the urgency to prioritise healthy food production in food systems. At the EU level, however, defining healthy food and integrating it into food governance remains a challenge, particularly regarding the inclusion of health-related characteristics in food safety assessments. While the EU primarily relies on the risk analysis principle to address food safety concerns, the process still exhibits weaknesses that hinder its direct impact on fostering a healthier food production landscape. This review demonstrates how the risk analysis process, particularly scientific opinions in risk assessment and external factors (economic and political) in risk management, impact food governance and the healthiness of food systems. We find that while external factors play a crucial role in risk management decisions by incorporating non-food safety considerations, they often stem from an imbalance of power favouring major industry and political stakeholders. This imbalance disproportionately influences decision-making, often overshadowing nutritional and health aspects. To address these challenges, we recommend directing research towards filling knowledge gaps and exploring minority scientific findings, and separating external factors from risk management’s decision-making process, to ensure that food governance prioritises public health and healthy food production.

This study identified food deserts and swamps, investigating their associations with socioeconomic and demographic conditions. This ecological study was conducted using data from urban census tracts in the city of Recife, which were considered the unit of analysis. Information on food retail was obtained from government sources in 2019. Census tracts below the 25th percentile in the density of healthy food retail (i.e., those that predominantly sell natural or minimally processed foods, mixed businesses, and super- and hypermarkets) were classified as food deserts. Census tracts above the 25th percentile in the density of unhealthy food retail (i.e., those selling primarily ultra-processed foods) were considered food swamps. The socioeconomic and demographic conditions of the census tracts were evaluated using variables from the 2010 census (per capita income, average income, race, literacy of the head of household, and the availability of essential services) and the Health Vulnerability Index. Census tracts considered food deserts (28.5%) were more vulnerable, characterized by lower income and access to essential services, more illiterate residents and more minorities (Black/Indigenous/mixed race). Food swamps (73.47%) were more prevalent in less vulnerable neighbourhoods characterized by higher percentages of literate residents and Whites, greater purchasing power, and better basic sanitation. The characteristics of Recife’s food deserts and swamps demonstrate social inequalities in the food environment. Public facilities could play a vital role in promoting healthy eating within food deserts. Additionally, future implementation of taxes on ultra-processed foods and the provision of tax subsidies to natural or minimally processed food sellers might contribute to fostering healthier dietary choices.

Globally, diet quality is poor, with populations failing to achieve national dietary guidelines. Such failure has been consistently linked with malnutrition and poorer health outcomes. In addition to the impact of diet on health outcomes, it is now accepted that what we eat, and the resulting food system, has significant environmental or planetary health impacts. Changes are required to our food systems to reduce these impacts and mitigate the impact of climate change on our food supply. Given the complexity of the interactions between climate change, food and health, and the different actors and drivers that influence these, a systems-thinking approach to capture such complexity is essential. Such an approach will help address the challenges set by the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in the form of the sustainable development goals (SDG). Progress against SDG has been challenging, with an ultimate target of 2030. While the scientific uncertainties regarding diet and public and planetary health need to be addressed, equal attention needs to be paid to the structures and systems, as there is a need for multi-level, coherent and sustained structural interventions and policies across the full food system/supply chain to effect behaviour change. Such systems-level change must always keep nutritional status, including impact on micronutrient status, in mind. However, benefits to both population and environmental health could be expected from achieving dietary behaviour change towards more sustainable diets.

This scoping review aimed to explore international evidence on the impact of Food Policy Groups (FPGs) on local food systems, in urban and rural regions of high-income countries. Peer-reviewed and grey literature were searched to identify thirty-one documents published between 2002 and 2022 providing evidence on the impact of FPGs. Activities spanned domains including increasing food equity (e.g. strengthening school meals programmes); increasing knowledge and/or demand for healthy food (e.g. food literacy programmes with children and adults); increasing food access (e.g. enhancing local food procurement); environmental sustainability (e.g. promoting low-waste food items on café menus); economic development (e.g. ensuring local businesses are not outperformed by large food distributors); and increasing food system resiliency (e.g. establishment of local produce schemes). Most FPGs reported conducting activities that positively influenced multiple food system domains and reported activities in urban areas, and to a lesser extent in rural areas. Our study highlighted a range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation strategies used to measure FPGs’ impact on local food systems. Our recommendations focus on regular and systematic evaluation and research surrounding the impact of FPG activities, to build the evidence base of their impact. Ideally, evaluation would utilise comprehensive and established tools. We recommend exploring the establishment of FPGs across more regions of high-income countries, particularly rural areas, and forming partnerships between FPGs, local government and universities to maximise implementation and evaluation of activities.

Droughts are a major global natural hazard, creating negative environmental and socio-economic impacts across a broad spectrum of sectors. However, agriculture is often the first sector to be impacted due to prolonged rainfall shortages reducing available soil moisture reserves with negative consequences for both rainfed and irrigated food crop production and for livestock. In the UK, recent droughts in 2018 and 2022 have highlighted the vulnerability of the agricultural and horticultural sectors since most production is rainfed and entirely dependent on the capricious nature of summer rainfall. Surprisingly, despite recognition of the agronomic and economic risks, there remains a paucity of evidence on the multi-scalar impacts of drought, including the impacts on crop yields and quality, the financial implications for farming and the consequences for fresh produce supply chains. Drawing on published grey and science literature, this review provides a comprehensive synthesis of drought impacts on U.K. agriculture, including characterisation of the sensitivity of the main sub-sectors to different types of drought, a critique of the short-term coping responses and longer-term strategies and identification of the main knowledge gaps which need to be addressed through a concerted effort of research and development to inform future policies focussing on climate change risk assessment for agriculture. Although the review focuses predominantly on U.K. evidence, the insights and findings are relevant to understanding drought impacts and risk management strategies in other temperate and humid regions where agriculture is a fundamentally important component of the economy.