Chapter Six

National Food Systems

Inclusive Transformation for Healthier Diets

John McDermott and Alan de Brauw

Policymakers need to know what policies, investments, and actions they can take to ensure food systems transform in a healthy, sustainable, and equitable way.

KEY FINDINGS

The rapid transformation of national food systems offers new opportunities for inclusion of poor and marginalized people, potentially improving dietary diversity, food safety, and quality.
As food systems transform across the spectrum from traditional to modern, government policy goals need to shift from a focus on food security to healthy, balanced diets.

National food system frameworks are useful tools for looking at the drivers and components of these systems, identifying data gaps, and finding promising entry points for actions to increase inclusion and improve nutrition outcomes.
Approaches to food system transformation must be country specific, as each country’s food system is unique and countries face different opportunities and trade-offs for inclusiveness at different stages of transformation.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Reverse traditional thinking about food systems by starting from the consumer, focusing on diets and consumer demand. Better collection of data on changing diets, especially consumption of processed foods, and development of nationally appropriate dietary guidelines can inform strategies to address rising obesity and persistent malnutrition.
Combine technological innovations, institutional capacity, and infrastructure investments—such as use of information and communications technology, food quality certification, and cold chains—to catalyze positive systemic change at the national level.

Continually adapt policies as food systems evolve to ensure they promote healthy diets, create an enabling environment for positive private sector contributions to making food systems inclusive, and manage trade-offs among different policy goals.

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