This report from IIED looks at when and how social learning-oriented approaches contribute to better and more sustainable development outcomes, focusing specifically on food security and climate change.

Public Health England(PHE) has published new guidelines setting out the approaches the food industry should take to reduce the net amount of sugar children consume through everyday food. 

This report authored by By Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at University of London was commissioned for Friends of the Earth. It outlines the current state of policy thinking on sustainable diets and reviews some national, international and local attempts to chart new policy directions to tackle growing evidence that food consumption has immense impact on environment, health, society and economy.

In this article researchers argue that even just 2.5 portions of fruit and vegetables daily can lower the chance of heart disease, stroke, cancer and premature death. If the amount is further increased to 10 a day this could prevent up to 7.8 million premature deaths worldwide every year.

This paper summarises the evidence on the role that agriculture plays in improving nutrition, how food systems are changing rapidly due to globalization, trade liberalization, and urbanization, and the implications for nutrition globally.

This research article presents a novel method for assessing public policy with regard to an urban food system and discusses a first application of the approach in Basel, Switzerland. We want to thank FCRN member Christian Schader from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) for providing us with this summary of his and his colleagues research. 

In the latest in a series of articles seeking to shake up the conversation about food production and its trade-offs (see for example our previous summary of Elena Bennett’s Nature commentary, and the subsequent FCRN discussion forum), this opinion piece seeks to shift the focus of the discourse away from food production as the goal of agriculture, and towards food security, incorporating biodiversity outcomes.

This is a commentary by Carbon Brief’s Leo Hickman on the latest executive order by US president Donald Trump that we copy below, for the original post -see here.

This report from the International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI provides a comprehensive overview of major food policy developments and events. Leading researchers, policy makers, and practitioners review what happened in food policy, and why, in 2016 and look forward to 2017. This year’s report has a special focus on the challenges and opportunities created by rapid urbanization, especially in low- and middle-income countries, for food security and nutrition.