Reversing the global obesity pandemic

Making progress on these pledges will require major shifts in the manner in which we address malnutrition. It entails shifting from treating the adverse effects of malnutrition to prevention by ensuring healthy balanced diets, to better address the root causes of malnutrition, and we'll need to develop new policies, strategies and programs to help us do that.

Here are some guiding ideas.

First, let's reform our food systems to ensure better nutrition for all. FAO’s State of Food and Agriculture 2013 showed how food systems influence the quantity, quality, diversity and nutritional content of foods, and determine the availability, affordability and acceptability of foods needed for good nutrition. Reforming our food systems to improve nutrition will require growing nutrient-rich foods and ensuring healthy processing to minimize the loss of nutrients.

Second, we must make it easier for consumers to make food choices that promote healthy diets. This requires political commitment besides effective and coherent policies and strategies. It will require increased investment in nutrition promotion and education programs. It will require creating schools, work places and communities that make healthy diets easily accessible and encourage people to exercise more. It will require empowering consumers with information through formal and informal popular nutrition education and giving more information on the food being sold to them, including through appropriate labelling.

Third, by creating a common vision and multisectoral approach involving governments, farming, health, retail and other relevant public and private sectors, as well as civil society. The multiple causes of malnutrition, including obesity, call for effective collaboration: no sector or entity can effectively address the problem on its own.

Fourth, trade and investment agreements must be designed to influence food systems positively. By improving the availability of, and access to, food, efficient and effective trade can play a key role in achieving nutrition objectives. But such agreements should not “crowd out” the possibility of developing local agriculture. Thriving national and local agriculture systems not only reduce countries' dependency on food imports but promote greater diversity in diets, can act as a buffer against price spikes in international markets, and generate jobs to help reduce rural poverty.

ICN2 has set the stage for all actors to come on board to reverse the fast rising global obesity. Malnutrition, from undernutrition to obesity, is preventable at a relatively low cost if we work well. Let us move quickly to reverse obesity trends and to make hunger and all forms of malnutrition history.

The author is the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) of the United Nations.