Professor Barry Popkin has several decades of experience examining and helping to shape food and nutrition policies globally, This Food Thinkers webinar will cover Professor Popkin’s reflection on the last decade of government food and nutrition policies and what it means for current and future action. Before 2010, governments had been unable to mount serious campaigns that meaningfully shifted food purchases and diet towards health, let alone slow down or reduce the upward trajectory of obesity and nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases. The last decade has seen the emergence of more structural policies focused on decreasing intake of unhealthy food and beverages high in sugar, sodium, and saturated fat. Building on decades of knowledge from global tobacco reduction, policies to address widespread consumption of ultra-processed foods are starting to emerge in some countries. But more concerted government action is needed, alongside countries identifying ways to provide free or highly subsidized access to healthy food (e.g., vegetables, fruits, legumes) for lower income populations. This webinar provides an overview of progress and inspiration for what is needed for future food policies to be effective.

The talk will be followed by an online Q&A session.

Barry M. Popkin, PhD, is the W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses globally (both in the U.S. and in low- and middle-income countries) on understanding the stages of transition and is currently focused on working with the impact of programmes and policies meant to improve the health of the population during their time of transition. Barry has received a dozen major awards for his global contributions. He has published more than 615 refereed journal articles and is one of the most cited nutrition scholars in the world, with more than 162,000 citations. He has given over 130 plenary lectures at major conferences across the world and continues as an active researcher and speaker globally.