8Fox AM, Balarajan Y, Cheng C, Reich MR: Measuring political commitment and opportunities to advance food and nutrition security: piloting a rapid assessment tool. Health Policy Plan 2015;30:566–578.
9von Braun J, Birner R: Designing Global Governance for Agricultural Development and Food and Nutrition Security, Review of Development Economics, 2016. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rode.12261/abstract.
10von Braun J, Kalkuhl M: International Science and Policy Interaction for Improved Food and Nutrition Security: Toward an International Panel on Food and Nutrition (IPFN), (ZEF Working Papers No. 142), 2015. http://www.zef.de/uploads/tx_zefportal/Publications/WP142_final.pdf.
11IFPRI: Global Nutrition Report 2015: Actions and Accountability to Advance Nutrition and Sustainable Development, Washington, DC, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/9780896298835.
Prof. Joachim von Braun
Center for Development Research, University of Bonn
Genscheralle 3
DE–53113 Bonn (Germany)
E-Mail [email protected]
3rd International Congress Hidden Hunger, March 20–22, 2017 in Hohenheim, Germany.
1 Good Governance indicators include, for example, “Control of Corruption,” “Voice and Accountability” or “Political Stability and Absence of Violence,” taken from Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/worldwide-governance-indicators.
2 For more details on the proposed panel see: von Braun and Kalkuhl [10] and von Braun and Birner [9].
Biesalski HK, Birner R (eds): Hidden Hunger: Strategies to Improve Nutrition Quality.
World Rev Nutr Diet. Basel, Karger, 2018, vol 118, pp 10–16 (DOI: 10.1159/000484397)
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What Does it Need to Improve Nutrition Quality? The Role of Public Partners
Hanns-Christoph Eiden
Federal Office for Agriculture and Food, Bonn, Germany
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Abstract
Public partners play a key role when we want to improve nutrition quality. They will not succeed, when they try to achieve the goal alone or tend to dominate other players. In their responsibility for common interests it is up to public partners to moderate and facilitate the multi-stakeholder and multi-sectorial dialogue to improve nutrition quality. It is up to public partners to establish clear legal and structural guidelines aiming to bring all partners together, to avoid conflicts of interests and, above all, establish conditions, in which consumers are sufficiently informed about food and nutrition, so that they are motivated, empowered, and adequately protected to take their own responsible decisions.
© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel
Introduction
When preparing my presentation for this opening lecture, I thought about how to best embed it in the context of this congress. Let me start with 3 introductory remarks. First, you are attending the 3rd International Congress on Hidden Hunger. We gathered for the first time exactly 4 years ago, just a few kilometers away. While 4 years ago the headline was “From Assessment to Solutions!” today we are discussing strategies to improve nutrition quality and combat hidden hunger. We have made progress since then [1].
Second, therefore, with my second introductory remark, I would like to stress that we are talking about action, about the roadmap to success. With the adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) [2], the world has defined this roadmap. Improved nutrition is explicitly mentioned in SDG 2. Goal 2 calls for action to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030, for attaining the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years and, for addressing the specific nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant, and lactating women.
Moreover, at least 12 of the 17 goals also contain indicators that are highly relevant for nutrition. This leads me to my third remark. None of the different SDGs can be achieved by treating each goal separately. Aiming at improved nutrition, achieving nutrition security as well as nutrition quality urges us to consider a wide range of aspects – from diversified and sustainable agriculture to food systems that care for the transportation and processing of food while preserving its quality. We need to consider the availability of good food for consumers at affordable prices throughout the year. And, of course, we need to consider issues such as health, sanitation, education, environmental challenges, gender issues, cultural issues, and rights issues. Improved nutrition is a truly multi-sector issue.
Nutrition Quality
What does talking about nutrition and nutrition quality mean? It means that we talk about the food we eat, about calories, the energy we need and take in every day, about safe food and about quality standards, about labelling and information on content and origin, about diet, a diet more or less diverse, a diet which is good or bad for us. So, when we are talking about nutrition, it is not just about what we eat. It is about how we eat and why we eat this way or that and how we think about our nutrition [3–5]. We are talking about us, about ourselves, about our lifestyles, our skills to handle food and meals, our behaviors in general and our nutritional behaviors in particular, and also about the conditions we live in.
This means that the quality of our nutrition, whether our diet is healthy or not, whether “it is health promoting” or not, significantly depends on how we live, how we learn, what we know about ourselves and about nutrition, whether we are able and motivated to act in a way that is appropriate for us, and whether we develop a lifestyle which fits our needs and allows us to nourish ourselves accordingly.
Physical activity is an important issue in that context [6]. Yet, knowledge and motivation are not sufficient. It is equally important to create both the physical and the social opportunity, which enable me to actually do what I am motivated to do. In fact, behavior emerges from the interaction between 3 necessary conditions: knowledge, motivation, and opportunity.
The Role of Public Partners
It is a complex task. Therefore, you need partners to move forward. Before describing more concretely the role of public partners, let me discuss a bit more in detail, who the partners are and what talking about a multi-actor approach actually means. It does not mean that all the partners have to do everything together. The roadmap to success