Food biodiversity for healthy, diverse diets

One of the world’s greatest challenges is to secure universal access to sufficient, healthy and affordable food that is produced sustainably. Current nutrition trends do not reveal a situation in which populations are well nourished, and the sustainability of how we produce, distribute and consume food is also a subject of concern. Serious levels of both undernutrition and overweight/obesity are reported for 57 out of 129 countries (1). Two billion people are overweight or obese, while two billion people lack essential vitamins and minerals needed for adequate nutrition. Malnutrition in children, which is in part linked to insufficient diets, is the underlying cause of half of all deaths among under-fives (2). Often malnutrition extremes, such as stunting in children and overweight adults, occur concurrently. Countries experiencing multiple forms of malnutrition, including under-five stunting, anaemia in women of reproductive age and adult overweight, are considered the new normal (3). At the same time there is an alarmingly fast-paced increase in non-communicable diet-related diseases (e.g. diabetes, hypertension) (4). One of the principal causes of these multiple burdens of malnutrition is poor diet. Diet-related factors are now the number one risk factor of morbidity and mortality globally

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