Governing the dietary transition. Linking agriculture, nutrition, and health

For the 2020 conference on "Leveraging agriculture for food security and health", IFPRI published a series of papers, some of which are of particular interest and summarised below.
The best approach to the governance of agriculture, nutrition, and health may largely depend on a country’s stage in the dietary transition—from a diet low in both calories and micronutrients (accompanied by pervasive undernutrition) to a transitional diet that provides adequate basic energy for most but an inadequate balance of nutrients to an affluent diet that provides excessive calorie energy, accompanied by health problems linked to obesity.
To better understand the wide variety of governance challenges across the agriculture, nutri-tion, and health sectors, and the equally wide variety of solutions to those challenges, the author first considers a range of illustrative cases from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the developed world. The article concludes by identifying a somewhat hidden but common theme at all three stages: the essential integrating role within households of primary caregivers to small children, namely the parents—especially the mother.

International Food Policy Research Institute - February 2011