Increased evidence base on what works for sustainable healthy diets

CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, commits to providing much-needed evidence on what works to make sustainable healthy diets accessible, affordable, available and desirable to people living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

By 2030, we will identify and release 25 evidence-based food system solutions – technologies, products, practices, processes, programs, and policies or a combination of these. Through partnerships, promising solutions will be identified and/or co-designed and then tested. These solutions will span the food system – consumer behaviour, the food environment and the food supply chain – and will be tested for their positive impacts on sustainable healthy diets, with special attention to women and youth, in LMICs. To ensure that sustainable healthy diets lead to better nutrition, some of the solutions will leverage actions from the health, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), social protection and education sectors.

The evidence will be generated under CGIAR’s new, six-year (2025–2030), multi-country, multidisciplinary research program to improve diets and nutrition in LMICs. The program, Better Diets and Nutrition, will apply systems thinking to address the accessibility, affordability, availability and desirability of sustainable healthy diets for urban and rural populations in LMICs.

CGIAR engagement with relevant in-country partners and other implementing organisations will address six topics spanning the entire food system: 1) consumers and food environments, 2) market systems, 3) end-to-end solutions for perishable nutrient-rich foods, 4) biofortified and health-enhancing staples, 5) nutrition-sensitive multisectoral systems and 6) transformative leadership. Research and capacity-sharing activities will support the country-led implementation of national action plans for food systems transformation (the UN Food Systems Summit process), national nutrition action plans and, to a lesser extent, nationally determined contributions (the Paris Agreement).

Progress in delivering results, defined by CGIAR’s Strategy and Results Framework as high-level outputs and intermediate outcomes, will be reported annually to the CGIAR System Office, with key milestones set for the activities in each country (to be confirmed). An internal monitoring system for Better Diets and Nutrition will feed the CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework. The completed evaluations will be cataloged online in CGIAR’s public repository, CGSpace, and disseminated by Better Diets and Nutrition to target audiences, like LMIC governments, funders, implementing organisations and the research community, through relevant knowledge exchange activities and science-policy dialogues.