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The United Nations has issued a digital Food Systems Thinking Guide for UN Resident Coordinators and UN Country Teams with tools and information for working collectively towards food system transformation.

It is intended as a working draft.  It provides an easy mechanism for immediate feedback.

You have to do a lot of scrolling.  When you do, you will get to key questions:

• What is a food systems approach and why does it matter?
• What is the state of food systems in my country?
• Who are the actors influencing the foods system?
• What are barriers and entry points to food system transformation?
• How can I integrate foods systems approach into programming?
• How can I communicate and advocate for foods systems transformation?

I took a look at the actors.  This section provides resources for engaging with stakeholders.

I also looked at barriers.  It lists things to consider and provides resources.

And I looked at communication strategies.  This one is much more complete and has useful videos and key messages along with the resources.

I see this as an advocacy toolkit focused on food system transformation.  Happy to have it.  Try it and give the UN some feedback on it to make it even better and more complete.

Increasingly and more urgently concerned about the effects on children of unrestricted marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, UNICEF and WHO have produced an invaluable manual on why and how governments must act to curb such marketing.

This is a follow up to the UNICEF report I talked about last week on engagement with food and beverage companies and to the WHO recommendations I posted about yesterday.

WHO and UNICEF are on a roll!

The rationale for this publication:

Food and beverage companies play a significant role in shaping children’s food environments, but their objectives are profit driven rather than child centred. They have a vested commercial interest in increasing sales of their unhealthy products and use highly immersive, engaging – and often unethical – marketing techniques to target children and their caregivers.
We know that food marketing harms children. It negatively affects children’s food preferences, purchase decisions and consumption behaviours, ultimately contributing to childhood obesity and diet-related disease. Food marketing also affects household purchasing decisions and the types of foods that are eaten in the home.

Among this report’s key messages:

• The evidence is clear that food marketing harms children – especially the poorest and most vulnerable.
• Tackling food marketing is challenging: past experience shows that food companies use loopholes and develop new strategies to bypass restrictions.
• Voluntary schemes are ineffective in reducing children’s exposure to foodmarketing.
• Mandatory regulation has the potential to be the most effective path to protecting children from the harmful impact of food
  marketing

Governments must act.  Now.

This exceptionaly timely and important report explains how.

UNICEF does not want its statements to be compromised by conflicted interests with food and beverage companies that make formula or foods for children.

Here’s how UNICEF will be dealing with the food and beverage interests.

This publication explains just how UNICEF intends to avoid conflicts of interest with companies making products that do not promote childrens’ health.

The practices and products of a subset of the F&B industry whose primary business is the production, distribution, marketing and retailing of ultra-processed foods and beverages (UPF) pose particular concern. The companies producing these unhealthy, nutrient-poor UPF – rich in sugar, salt, trans-fats and food additives and preservatives – are major drivers of today’s broken food system and the global epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases…It is now widely accepted that the practices and products of the UPF industry harm children’s and adolescents’ lives and have become the main commercial determinant of childhood malnutrition and disease.

Evidence shows that direct partnering with the UPF industry (i.e., working with) and voluntary UPF industry initiatives do not translate into large-scale sustainable results in transforming food systems for children. Further, direct funding engagements with UPF industry stakeholders pose a significant reputational risk to the credibility of UNICEF programming and independence as governments’ trusted advisor for policy formulation, normative guidance and programme scale-up for children and adolescents.

UNICEF says it will, among other measures (my emphasis):

• Continue to advocate for the F&B industry not to be included in public policy making.
• Continue avoiding all partnerships with F&B industries that violate the Code.
• Avoid all partnerships with ultra-processed food and beverage (UPF) industries.
• Exclude Code violators and UPF industries in UNICEF-led business platforms.
• Engage responsibly with the F&B industry in humanitarian response.

These commitments are a major public health advance.  Let’s hope UNICEF sticks with them.

Earlier this week I wrote about the UNICEF-WHO meeting I went to in Geneva on implementing the 1981 International Code governing marketing of infant formulas.

UNICEF has just issued an update: What I [meaning you] Should Know about the Code

This new publication—a one-stop shopping guide to the issues—summarizes UN resolutions on the Code since 1981 as well as subsequent research on breastfeeding and infant formula marketing, most notably the Lancet Commission reports I wrote about earlier.

Incontrovertible evidence demonstrates how inappropriate marketing of infant formulas undermines breastfeeding and can harm children, especially in places that do not have clean water to dilute formulas.

Every country in the world has committed to the Code—the United States was the last holdout.  We do not seem to pay much attention to the Code’s provisions.

Here is one example.  The Code says:I’m not sure how to interpret the “except” phrase, except that our FDA must think that the health claims on a product like this are entirely acceptable, whereas they would not be allowed in many other countries.  [Reference 23 refers to UN General Assembly Resolution 63.23.]

The Code states that infant formulas should not be labeled in any way that suggests formula might be superior to breast milk.  This and the accompanying statement on the product website, would appear to violate that guideline.

Infant formulas do a good job of substituting for the nutrients in breast milk.  Because the FDA tightly regulates their ingredients, they are all pretty much alike, although they vary in price enormously.

The infant formula industry deserves close scrutiny of its marketing practices and this UNICEF publication is an excellent place to begin.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, during the seventeenth session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has incribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity—ta da!—baguette bread.

The traditional production process entails weighing and mixing the ingredients, kneading, fermentation, dividing, relaxing, manually shaping, second fermentation, marking the dough with shallow cuts (the baker’s signature) and baking. Unlike other loaves, the baguette is made with only four ingredients (flour, water, salt and leaven and/or yeast) from which each baker obtains a unique product. Baguettes require specific knowledge and techniques…They also generate modes of consumption and social practices that differentiate them from other types of bread…Their crisp crust and chewy texture result in a specific sensory experience.

The New York Times account points out that this designation comes in the midst of “economic upheavals that include rising prices and the widespread closing of the country’s rural bakeries.”

The decision captured more than the craft knowledge of making bread — it also honored a way of life that the thin crusty loaf has long symbolized and that recent economic upheavals have put under threat. UNESCO’s choice came as boulangeries in rural areas are vanishing, hammered by economic forces like the slow hollowing out of France’s villages, and as the economic crisis gripping Europe has pushed the baguette’s price higher than ever.

* The photo is of Salvador Dali’s Bust of a Woman at MOMA.

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COP27 is the term used to refer to the 27th annual United Nations Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework on Climate Change Conference) taking place last week and this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The New York Times has a COP27 explainer with a Q and A

What is at stake at COP27?  This conference will test whether the international community can respond to the increasing urgency of the crisis.  Alden Meyer, an environmental activist and policy analyst who has attended 25 of the past 26 COPs said the global negotiations must evolve from haggling over verbiage in legal treaties to helping countries meet their emissions pledges in time to avoid more climate catastrophes and protect the most vulnerable nations.

This may be the 27th such conference, but it is the first to deal with the intersection of food production and consumption with climate change: how climate change affects agriculture and food systems and how agriculture and food systems affect climate change.

For the first time, several pavilions are devoted to food systems, this one specifically.

Food Tank is managing some of the programs at these pavilions.  Its president, Danielle Nierenberg, reports on them daily at this site

The official UN news site is here.

On November 12, agriculture was the theme of the day.   This is explained in a short video. 

Water was yesterday’s theme.

I’ve been trying to follow the events from Nierenberg’s comments and from the occasional article in the New York Times, for example, here (what the fights are about), here (videos of speeches), and here (protest and hunger strikes).

The Food4Climate pavilion’s YouTube channel for live streams and videos is here.

The Rockefeller Foundation is involved in COP27.  It sponsors a food and agriculture pavilion.

The Foundation also has produced a film, Food 2050.  The trailer is here.

I’m particularly interested in this film because Rupa Marya, who is attending the conference, says I’m in it and sent me this screen shot (I’m not in the trailer).

Will anything good come out of this COP27?  I’m inspired by this speech from the head of the World Health Organization.  Bringing these issues to public attention might help.

Since 2020, the food & energy sectors’ fortune has grown by $382 billion, while 3+ billion people can’t afford a healthy diet. Food systems have become a top contributor to environmental degradation, threatening health. That’s why the #ClimateAction & Nutrition initiative is key. pic.twitter.com/dNIR1cQsX4

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 12, 2022

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FAO and other UN agencies. released the 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI).

Here’s the video that comes with it: A Tale of Empty Plates.

The report does not mince words:

• This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.
• The distance to reach many of the SDG 2 [Sustainable Development Goal #2, Zero Hunger] targets is growing wider each year.
• The intensification of the major drivers behind recent food insecurity and malnutrition trends (i.e. conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks) combined with the high cost of nutritious foods and growing inequalities will continue to challenge food security and nutrition.

As the press release puts it, “The numbers paint a grim picture:”

• As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 – 46 million people more from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.
• …the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8 percent of the world population. This compares with 8 percent in 2019 and 9.3 percent in 2020.
• Around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
• The gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men.
• Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019.
• An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting….149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight.

The one bright note:

• Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

But overall

• nearly 670 million people (8 percent of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030.
• This is a similar number to 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• In otherwords, there has been no progress since 2015.

If we want to fix this, we will have to:

• End the pandemic
• End wars
• End climate change
• End income and social inequalities

There’s our agenda.  That’s all.  Get busy.

The long-awaited UN Food System Summit takes place today.  The programme includes announcements from more than 85 heads of state and government.

The UN Food Systems Summit was announced by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, on World Food Day in October 2019 as a part of the Decade of Action for delivery on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The aim of the Summit is to deliver progress on all 17 of the SDGs through a food systems approach, leveraging the interconnectedness of food systems to global challenges such as hunger, climate change, poverty and inequality. The Summit will take place during the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, September 23. More information about the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit can be found online: https://www.un.org/foodsystemssummit

Despite its focus on food systems approaches, it is highly controversial—as I explained in previous posts.

• The UN Summit on Food Systems 1: The UN Version
• The UN Summit on Food Systems 2: The Critique
• The UN Food Systems Pre-Summit starts in Rome TODAY: Online Access
• Weekend reading: A call to the UN Food Systems Summit: Ultra-processed foods

In preparation for today’s events, Lela Nargi of The Counter provides a thoughtful summary of the issues: “The UN is holding a summit on building a sustainable future for food and ag. Why are so many people upset about it?”

The concerns:

• Who is behind the Summit? [Proponents of industrial agriculture]
• Who sets the Summit agenda? [Ditto]
• What is excluded? [Indigenous practices, regenerative agriculture, agroecology]

While watching to see how this plays out, you can take a look at:

• Information about today’s #FoodSystems4People counter-demonstration
• Meat lobbying groups hard at work.  As The Guardian puts it,

Also from The Guardian:

• UN food summit will be ‘elitist’ and ‘pro-corporate’, says special rapporteur
• Corporate colonization’: small producers boycott UN food summit

And for why the issue of agroecology is so important, see Raj Patel’s discussion in Scientific American: Agroecology Is the Solution to World Hunger

Marcia Ishii asks: Could FAO’s partnership with CropLife International have anything to do with the disappearance of agroecology from the agenda?