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	Five ways to tackle disastrous diets by Food First / Yale News & agencies   “Our food systems are making people sick,” warned Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food. “One in seven people globally are undernourished, and many more suffer from the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiency, while 1.3 billion are overweight or obese.”   “Faced with this public health crisis, we continue to prescribe medical remedies: nutrition pills and early-life nutrition strategies for those lacking in calories; slimming pills, lifestyle advice and calorie counting for the overweight. But we must tackle the systemic problems that generate poor nutrition in all its forms,” the independent expert said as he presented his report* on nutrition to the UN Human Rights Council.   “The right to food means not only access to an adequate quantity of food, but also the ability to have a balanced and nutritious diet,” Mr. De Schutter underlined. “Governments must not abstain from their responsibility to secure this right.”   Mr. De Schutter identified five priority actions for placing nutrition at the heart of food systems in the developed and developing world:   1) taxing unhealthy products;   2) regulating foods high in saturated fats, salt and sugar;   3) cracking down on junk food advertising;   4) overhauling misguided agricultural subsidies that make certain ingredients cheaper than others; and   5) supporting local food production so that consumers have access to healthy, fresh and nutritious foods.   “Urbanization, supermarketization and the global spread of modern lifestyles have shaken up traditional food habits. The result is a public health disaster,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Governments have been focusing on increasing calorie availability, but they have often been indifferent to what kind of calories are on offer, at what price, to whom they are accessible, and how they are marketed.”   The Special Rapporteur highlighted, for example, that in 2010 U.S. companies spent $8.5 billion advertising food, candy and non-alcoholic beverages, while $44 million was budgeted for the U.S. Government’s primary standing healthy eating program.   “We have deferred to food companies the responsibility for ensuring that a good nutritional balance emerges. Voluntary guidelines and piecemeal nutrition initiatives have failed to create a system with the right signals, and the odds remain stacked against the achievement of a healthy, balanced diet,” he said.   The Special Rapporteur also identified the abundance of processed food as a major threat to improving nutrition. “Heavy processing thrives in our global food system, and is a win-win for multinational agri-food companies. Processed items can be produced and distributed on a huge scale, thanks to cheap subsidized ingredients and their increased shelf life.”   “But for the people, it is a lose-lose,” he stressed. “Heavily processed foods lead to diets richer in saturated and trans-fatty acids, salt and sugars. Children become hooked on the junk foods targeted at them. In better-off countries, the poorest population groups are most affected because foods high in fats, sugar and salt are often cheaper than healthy diets as a result of misguided subsidies whose health impacts have been wholly ignored.”   The UN expert noted that the West is now exporting diabetes and heart disease to developing countries, along with the processed foods that line the shelves of global supermarkets. By 2030, more than 5 million people will die each year before the age of 60 from non-communicable diseases linked to diets.   “We should not simply invest our hopes in medicalizing our diets with enriched products, or changing people’s choices through health warnings. We need ambitious, targeted nutrition strategies to protect the right to adequate food, and such strategies will only work if the food systems underpinning them are put right,” the Special Rapporteur said.   USA: Report slams makers of sugary drinks for targeting children. (Yale News)   Young people are being exposed to a massive amount of marketing for sugary drinks, such as full-calorie soda, sports drinks, energy drinks, and fruit drinks, according to a new study from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. The study is the most comprehensive and science-based assessment of sugary drink nutrition and marketing ever conducted.   The data show that companies marketing sugary drinks target young people, especially black and Hispanic youth.   The report’s authors studied marketing by 14 beverage companies and examined the nutritional quality of nearly 600 products including full-calorie soda, energy drinks, fruit drinks, flavored water, sports drinks, and iced teas, as well as diet energy drinks and diet children’s fruit drinks.   “Beverage companies have pledged to improve child-directed advertising,” said lead researcher Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center.   “But we are not seeing a true decrease in marketing exposure. Instead companies have shifted from traditional media to newer forms that engage youth through rewards for purchasing sugary drinks, community events, cause-related marketing, promotions, product placements, social media, and smartphones."   Marlene Schwartz, co-author and deputy director of the Rudd Center, said “The beverage industry needs to clean up their youth-directed products: reduce the added sugar, take out the artificial sweeteners, and stop marketing products high in caffeine and sugar to young people. We also need the nutrition facts, including caffeine content, for all beverages, especially energy drinks.”   “Our results clearly show that the beverage industry’s self-regulatory pledges are not working,” concluded co-author Kelly Brownell, director and co-founder of the Rudd Center.   “Children are seeing more, not less marketing, for drinks that increase the risk for serious diseases. If the beverage companies want to be considered public health partners, they need to do better.” Visit the related web page
	Food Security is a Global Challenge by Kofi Annan Foundation   (Speech by Kofi Annan to mark the opening of the Centre on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford).   The challenges you are focussing on could hardly be more important. Nor could your timing better underline their urgency.   Only last week the UN marked the world’s population reaching seven billion. And it was just 13 years earlier, in Sarajevo, where the world celebrated the birth of the six billionth child.   This growth has been driven by great advances in healthcare, higher levels of prosperity, and longer life expectancy.   But these achievements are marred by the knowledge that our successes go hand in hand with a shameful failure.   For almost one in seven people on our planet will today not have enough to eat.   Addressing this failure, urgent as it is, will be made much harder by climate change.   For rising temperatures and more frequent severe weather will have a disastrous impact on the availability and productivity of agricultural land. Indeed they already are.   It is these two inter-linked global challenges- food security in an era of climate change, and their impact on our ambitions for a fairer and more secure world that I want to talk about today.   I will focus in particular on the challenges and opportunities that currently exist in Africa.   We live at a time of great contrasts. New technologies and the benefits of globalisation have created greater prosperity and more opportunity than ever before. But this progress has not been shared evenly.   Hundreds of millions of our fellow citizens continue to live in poverty, and without dignity.   At the heart of this global inequality lies food and nutrition insecurity. The lack of food security for almost one billion people is an unconscionable moral failing.   But it is also a major brake on overall socio-economic development. It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth.   But despite the increase in our knowledge and capabilities, instead of seeing a reduction in the number of people going hungry, we are seeing an increase.   According to the World Bank, rapidly rising food prices during 2010 and 2011 pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.   We also know that we will have to find food to feed many more mouths in the coming decades.   Recent projections warn that the number of people may not stabilize at nine billion, as was forecast only two years ago, but could surpass 10 billion by the end of the century.   At the same time, greater prosperity in developing countries will see three billion people moving up the food chain with a growing appetite for meat and dairy products.   So grain, once used to feed people, is increasingly being switched to feed animals.   And rising oil prices have brought greater competition from heavily subsidized agro or bio fuels.   These factors alone could lead to demand for food increasing by 70 per cent by 2050. This would be a tough enough challenge. But it is only half of a dangerous equation.   For we are facing new constraints on food production of which the most severe is climate change. Climate change is an all-encompassing threat to our health, security, and stability.   It will have a major impact on fresh water resources and the productivity of the land.   Some experts warn that we may still be badly under-estimating the damaging long-term impact of climate change on food supply.   What is certain is that rising temperatures and changes to rainfall patterns are already affecting crop yields negatively.   This is a terrible legacy to leave our children. Yet so far, our generation of leaders - including those here in the United States - have failed to find the vision or courage to tackle it.   This is despite the last 12 months seeing record-setting floods and snowstorms, prolonged drought, and devastating wildfires here in the United States.   Worldwide, 20 countries in 2010 experienced new record-high temperatures; a heat wave in Russia proved the deadliest in human history; and the current flooding in Thailand highlights that the threat of extreme weather events driven by man-made climate change is growing.   Yet those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies, still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests.   This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change- the poorest and most vulnerable, that will pay the highest price.   Populations in developing regions which are heavily reliant on rain water for crops will immediately feel the impact of rising temperatures and water shortages.   In Sub-Saharan Africa, crop yields from rain-fed farmlands are forecast to fall as much as 50% by the end of this century, while 8% of fertile land is expected to be transformed into dustbowls, useless for cultivation or grazing.   These damaging changes are taking place in a continent where agriculture has already suffered badly from sustained lack of investments.   A lack of investment in research, human resource development and infrastructure means that cereal yields are a quarter of the world’s average, and have barely increased in 30 years.   As a result, Africa - the continent where the biggest future growth in population is projected - is already failing to produce enough food to feed its own peoples.   This is the deeply worrying backdrop against which the work of this Centre will begin. It is why no challenge is in greater need of the innovation and intellectual rigour for which this university is internationally renowned.   But there are also signs of hope and opportunities to be seized. First – and almost counter-intuitively - the rise in food prices may help us find solutions, provided we can find mechanisms to protect the vulnerable and prevent price volatility.   * Visit the link below to access the complete speech. Visit the related web page
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