Creating a Healthy Food Environment as a Radical Population Approach and Japanese Initiatives

Abstract

Nutrition education is important to encourage people to promote a healthy diet; however, education alone exerts a limited effect. It is crucial to create a healthy food environment, including food systems that supply diversified, balanced, and healthy food options. Improving the food environment is a population approach. Radical population approaches necessitate removing the underlying impediments, such as high sodium products, sugar-sweetened beverages, and unhealthy ultra-processed foods. Negotiation and collaboration with the private sector is critical to tackle and solve these issues. In Japan, public-private-academic collaboration has been implemented since 2013 in the national health promotion action, termed Health Japan 21 (Second term). Recently, Japan has launched a novel initiative to create a healthy food environment.