Urban Food Actions Platform

Some dietary and food recommendations are considered more sustainable and protective of human health and the environment.

The challenge lies in putting the recommendations into practice.

Discover ways and means of incorporating more sustainable and nutritious diets. For instance, reorienting school meal programmes and other institutional food services (from hospitals to elderly homes) to provide nutritious and safe food that contribute to healthy diets; developing regulatory and voluntary instruments to promote sustainable diets and address associated with poor diets and obesity involving private and public companies, using marketing, health promotion and communication programmes; developing and labelling policies/schemes; using economic incentives or disincentives.

Related Resources

Sustainable diets and nutrition - Reports & Case Studies
Urban diets and nutrition: Trends, challenges and opportunities for policy action
This brief sets out four priority areas where policies concerning urban diets and nutrition are in particular need of change: governance of urban food systems, wider aspects of urban governance, policies relating to the informal retail sector and addressing the triple burden of malnutrition, including overweight and obesity. While most...
(Global coverage)
2017 -
Sustainable diets and nutrition - Articles
Changing diets: Urbanization and the nutrition transition
Diets are changing with rising incomes and urbanization— people are consuming more animal-source foods, sugar, fats and oils, refined grains, and processed foods. This “nutrition transition” is causing increases in overweight and obesity and diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Urban residents are making the nutrition transition fastest—...
(Global coverage)
2017 - Corinna Hawkes, Jody Harris, Stuart Gillespie
Governance and planning, Sustainable diets and nutrition, Social and economic equity, Food production and ecosystem management, Food supply and distribution, Food loss and waste - Frameworks
Food for cities, what roles for Local Governments in Global South?
In a constantly urbanizing world, city governments have come to play a crucial role in urban food policies. From among the challenges facing cities, ensuring food security for their residents is vital, and this must be achieved keeping in mind both the balance to be found between urban and rural...
(Global coverage)
2017 - R. Fages, N. Bricas
Sustainable diets and nutrition - Academic Literature
Food (In)Security in Rapidly Urbanising, Low-Income Contexts
Urbanisation in low and middle-income nations presents both opportunities and immense challenges. As urban centres grow rapidly, inadequate housing and the lack of basic infrastructure and services affect a large and growing proportion of their population. There is also a growing body of evidence on urban poverty and its links...
(Global coverage)
2017 - Cecilia Tacoli
Sustainable diets and nutrition, Food supply and distribution - Reports & Case Studies
Food Insecurity in Informal Settlements in Lilongwe, Malawi
Although there is widespread food availability in urban areas across the Global South, it is not correlated with universal access to adequate amounts of nutritious foods. In Southern Africa, empirical research has uncovered extensive food insecurity at the household scale in cities with an abundance of food.1 An urban household...
Malawi (Africa)
2017 - Emmanuel Chilanga, Liam Riley, Juliana Ngwira, Chisomo Chalinda and Lameck Masitala
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