Policy Update: Snapshot of the Global Food Policy Report

By Kelly Regan, Let's Move Pittsburgh

To increase awareness of children’s health and wellness initiatives, Phipps' Let’s Move Pittsburgh project provides Policy Update, a column on local, state and national health policies that impact you.

On March 23, 2017, the annual Global Food Policy Report was released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The IFPRI is a research-based policy group that works to find sustainable solutions to reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition in countries all over the globe.¹

The main goals of the institute include ensuring sustainable food production, promoting healthy food systems, improving markets and trade, transforming agriculture, building resilience to economic, political and environmental shocks, and strengthening institutions and governance.¹

This year’s report focused on food security and nutrition in urban environments, including the challenges that urban environments pose to food access, the impacts of urban environments on a diet shifting more towards “animal-source foods, sugar, fats and oils, refined grains, and processed foods,” as well as how cities can alter food systems as a whole. The report also included a summary of regional developments in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.²

Some of the driving factors behind the shift in urban diet that the report presents include income and physical access to the food products, along with desirability and convenience. This analysis is crucial in understanding and attempting to reverse the degradation in quality of diet in urban environments. The report draws a strong connection between this dietary shift towards sugar, salts and fats with the growing global obesity epidemic.²

For a summarized fact sheet of the report, click here.

To read the full report, click here.

Sources

1. The International Food Policy Research Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 June 2017.
2. "Global Food Policy Report 2017." International Food Policy Research Institute. IFPRI, n.d. Web. 21 June 2017.