2020 Global Nutrition Report Released

The 2020 edition of the Global Nutrition Reportwas released today. The Report looks beyond global and national patterns and uses the best-available data. It also features in-depth analysis and expert opinion from several SDSN affiliates, including Cynthia Rosenzweig and Zulfiqar Bhutta.

This 2020 edition focuses on inequality both between and within countries, and calls on governments, businesses, and civil society to step up efforts to tackle injustices in food systems. It contrasts the cases of the poorest countries, where rates of undernutrition are still quite high, with the wealthiest countries, where rapidly rising obesity threatens public health. These differences are especially pronounced among children, finding that dietary diversity is substantially lower for children born into poor households, rural households, or households where mothers are less educated. The report also highlights that poor nutrition in nearly all cases is not a choice, but results from lack of access to healthy food, and particularly barriers of cost and geographic proximity to markets with diverse and healthy options.

Perhaps most importantly, the report highlights several key interventions that are needed now to address malnutrition around the world. Governments can change food subsidy frameworks to promote more nutritious foods and infrastructure investments to improve supply chain issues and improve market access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The health sector can invest more resources in training and deploying nutritionists, and commit to routine and systematic collection of nutrition data, disaggregated by key population characteristics to track inequalities in outcomes. The Report also proposes the establishment of an international system of governance and accountability to address power imbalances in the food and health system and hold to account those responsible for creating inequities in food and health systems.

Read the full report on the GNR website.