Solving Food and Nutrition Problems Globally
Chapter 22. Solving Food and Nutrition Problems: Strategies, Goals, and Gaps
This chapter examines efforts to solve food, nutrition, and farming challenges in the global agrifood system, highlighting the global failure to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to curb climate change amid increasing food insecurity, hunger, and diet-related diseases. It discusses local, national, and global approaches, including fortification and biofortification (genetic engineering); policy and regulation; nutrition programs and education; and diet guidelines and recommendations. It defines the principles of healthy, sustainable diets, noting agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and technological advances (e.g., precision agriculture, artificial intelligence (AI), nanotechnology, robots, drones, and the Internet of Things (IoT)) that have transformed farming in the Fourth Industrial (Agricultural) Revolution (4AR). It explores food waste solutions, emphasizing the reduce-reuse-recycle framework within a circular economy that feeds hungry people. It stresses the importance of an ecotechno future and multilevel interventions, local to global, to create healthy, sustainable food systems that shift sapiens as a species to plant-based diets.
Core Topics This Chapter Addresses
Guiding Questions
⮞ What are our global objectives for curbing climate change and creating a better world—and are we on target to meet them?
⮞ What tools are used to fight food and nutrition problems?
⮞ What are the core principles of a healthy diet for H. sapiens, and how do diet guidelines around the world measure up?
⮞ How are fortification and biofortification combating malnutrition around the world?
⮞ Is agroecology the key to sustainable food systems—and is it compatible with genetic engineering?
⮞ What technologies are transforming farming?
⮞ Are we winning the war on wasted food?
Innovations in Food and Health
This chapter shares tools and technologies for addressing today's food and nutrition challenges—ideal for courses in public health nutrition, food policy, environmental science, and food science and technology, or solution-driven journalism.