SDG Policy Brief Summary

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Healthy diets for all: A key to meeting the SDGs
POLICY BRIEF No. 10 | November 2017 | SUMMARY MESSAGES FOR DECISION MAKERS
Achieving high-quality diets for all is critically important Achieving high-quality diets for
to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals all requires concerted action across
(SDGs) yet remains invisible in terms of SDG language, several sectors. Six priorities for
targets and indicators. policymakers are:
1 Pay explicit attention to diet quality
Healthy diets provide a foundation underpinning successful in developing plans to meet the
progress towards targets in health, agriculture, inequality, Sustainable Development Goals.
2 Adopt a food systems approach
poverty and sustainable consumption, as well as associated to improving diets and meeting
development challenges such as low educational attainment, the SDGs.
3 Focus on improving diet for infants,
poor physical growth and low labour productivity.
young children, adolescent girls
and women.
The importance of healthy, high-quality diets is underlined
4 Address barriers and shocks impeding
by four key facts: access to healthy diets for vulnerable
• There is a deepening nutrition crisis. Malnutrition in all its forms already groups.
affects one in three people worldwide – if population growth and climate 5 Widen national policy approaches to
change increase as predicted, this could rise to one in two. the interpretation of SDG2 to enable
• Six of the top nine risk factors to global health are now related to diet. policy action to ensure well-functioning
The risk that poor diets pose to mortality and morbidity is now greater than food systems.
the risks of air pollution, alcohol, drug and tobacco use combined. 6 Step up efforts to collect and report
• The effects of poor diets and nutrition risk locking individuals and countries data on diet quality.
into long-term disadvantage. For example, child stunting can have lifelong
effects in terms of sub-optimal cognitive development, ill-health, impaired
physical growth and reduced earning potential.
• Malnutrition severely impacts the productivity of many countries and, in the
long term, threatens inclusive growth. Across Africa and Asia, the estimated
impact of undernutrition on gross domestic product (GDP) is 11% every year.
Addressing poor quality diets and malnutrition will both release a brake
and accelerate progress in achieving many SDGs. Delivering healthy diets will
help unlock the development potential of individuals and boost economic
productivity and efficiency. It will also reduce demands on expenditure in
areas such as health and social protection.
Meeting the SDGs: Why diet quality matters
The Global Panel’s policy brief Healthy diets for all: A Key to Meeting the SDGs calls for policymakers
at all levels to recognize the central role of high-quality diets and nutrition in achieving the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development.
NO
LIFE POVERTY
ON LAND
LIFE ZERO
BELOW WATER Stimulates demand Improves well-being, HUNGER
for food linked reduces health
to sustainable costs and increases
production productivity, and
future earning
potential
Enhances demand Increases
for food linked to prosperity, reduces
sustainable aquatic hunger, and improves
production food security
CLIMATE GOOD HEALTH

ACTION AND WELL-BEING
Supports Reduces the risk
significant reduction of morbidity and
of greenhouse mortality for a range
gas emissions Diet of diseases
Quality
Makes healthier Supports improved
foods available to address cognitive development
undernutrition and healthy choices by
and obesity mothers and the coming
RESPONSIBLE generations QUALITY
CONSUMPTION EDUCATION
AND PRODUCTION
Helps reduce Helps unlock
stunting which girls and female
mainly affects adolescents’ potential
low-income groups to perform well
at school and in
Stimulates the workforce
productivity and
reduces likelihood
of disease
GENDER
REDUCED EQUALITY
INEQUALITIES
DECENT WORK AND

ECONOMIC GROWTH
The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for

Nutrition supports the Sustainable Development Goals.
Find out more here: Glopan.org/SDG
Jointly funded by
This report is based on research funded in part by the UK
Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings
and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the funders
T +44 20 3073 8325 E [email protected] W glopan.org @Glo_PAN

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CLIMATE GOOD HEALTH

DECENT WORK AND

The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for

T +44 20 3073 8325 E [email protected] W glopan.org @Glo_PAN

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