Résumé
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition (FSN), where policies can be designed, interventions can be coordinated, options can be shared and decisions at different levels can be prepared. The High Level Panel of Experts on FSN (HLPE), science-policy interface of the CFS, was created in October 2009, as an essential element of the reform of the CFS, with three key functions: (i) assess and analyze the current state of FSN and its underlying causes; (ii) provide scientific analysis on specific policy-relevant issues; and (iii) identify critical and emerging issues for FSN. All the HLPE reports are available online: http://www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/en/. The HLPE organizes an inclusive scientific dialogue, building upon the diversity of disciplines, backgrounds and knowledge systems. It thrives to propose a common language, clarify contradictory information and knowledge, elicit the backgrounds and rationales of controversies: "One of the key roles of the HLPE reports is to help members and participants in CFS to understand why they disagree" (MS Swaminathan, 1st HLPE Chairperson). In 2014, in its first note on critical and emerging issues for FSN, the HLPE highlighted the importance of healthy nutrition in changing food systems. Globally, one person in three today is malnourished. If current trends continue, this figure will reach one in two by 2030. The human health, environmental, economic and social consequences of malnutrition are crippling and the burdens created by malnutrition are transmitted across generations. Understanding the causes of this situation is key to any action to improve nutrition. It requires considering recent evolutions of diets and food systems and their drivers: how and why do diets change? What are the links between diets, consumption and consumer habits and food systems? How do changes in food systems affect changes of diets, and therefore health and nutritional outcomes? Building on the momentum of the International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) in 2014, the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition and the SDGs, the CFS requested the HLPE to produce a report on Nutrition and food systems. The purpose of this report is two-fold: (i) to analyse the ways in which food systems and dietary patterns interact and result in nutritional outcomes for individuals; and (ii) to highlight effective policies and programmes that shape food systems in order to contribute more effectively to improved nutrition and ensure the right to healthy food for all in a sustainable way. The report identifies three main elements of food systems (food value chain, food environment, and consumer behaviour) on which policies can act to improve diets and nutrition outcomes. It provides examples of successful policies and programmes and concrete recommendations to different stakeholders on how to progress towards this objective. It also points out to the need for further interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial research covering all the aspects of food systems, from production to consumption, to help design more effective nutrition-sensitive policies and programmes adapted to different contexts.