Abstract
Among the great challenges the world faces are how to ensure food security for its growing population—projected to rise to around 10 billion by 2050—so it can meet their nutritional needs for a healthy life. Current regulations and literature on food security mainly focus on food quantity (i.e., portion sizes), daily calorie intake and methods for increasing food production and too little on food and diet quality and the holistic effects of (mal)nutrition. From a systems perspective, in order to promote innovation policies for more sustainable food systems, food security cannot be viewed independently; rather, it is characterized by the interplay of an extensive network of economic, environmental and social dimensions that should all be taken into account in a comprehensive resilient and sustainable global food system. Here, we highlight one aspect of this vast network that we consider a particular challenge—yet also a great opportunity—for innovative policies geared toward more sustainable food systems: the interplay of hunger and obesity, including resulting policy strategies beyond potential efficiency improvements in farming practices. Future studies need to emphasize the importance of an in-depth understanding of the interdependencies within the global food system and its interrelatedness with societal and natural systems as part of coupled human-environment systems and in the face of continuing population growth and food demand globally. Recommended strategies for achieving sustainable food security systems include innovative educational approaches and stakeholder-driven innovation policies based on mutual learning processes between society, science, industry and policymakers, as well as fostering increased responsibility of all members of society along the agriculture and food value chain.
Highlights
Among the great challenges the world faces are how to ensure food security for its growing population—projected to rise to around 10 billion by 2050—so it can meet their nutritional needs for a healthy life
The overarching goal of this paper is to contribute to an enhanced systemic understanding of the interdependence of nutrition, health and wellbeing
We argued that an in-depth understanding of highly complex food systems is a prerequisite for the development of effective interventions and innovation policies at various societal levels that are striving for a sustainable and resilient food system
Summary
Malnutrition has been linked to both under- as well as overweight [1,2,3,4] and is considered the single most important threat to global public health [5,6,7], with data from the World Health. Beyond that, developing and developed economies are differently affected by but might differently perceive the single goals and targets (with tremendous differences even within developed as well as developing economies), due to the stakeholders’ potential divergence of explicit and implicit attitudes related to economic, ecological and social facets of sustainability [33] These attitudes go beyond functional differences of one country being affected by under-nutrition and hunger, whereas others facing over-nutrition and obesity: large country-wise differences are related, for example, to the efficiency in production and consumption, including the occurrence of food waste at various phases of the food supply chain. Numerous reasons including inequality (e.g., [45])
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