Poor diet bigger health hazard than killer diseases: UN body

The News

According to a report by UNFAO, addressing loss and waste of nutritious foods should be the new priority for improving diets and nutrition.

Context

Globally, 3 billion people have poor or inadequate diets.
Loss of nutrition and waste of nutritious food fundamentally affect the availability and affordability of healthy diet.
Every year, approximately 1.3 billion metric tons (about 1/3rd) of food produced for human consumption does not reach the consumer.
Thus, reducing loss and waste in nutritious foods would yield substantial benefits far beyond addressing hunger and malnutrition.
In this direction, UNFAO-based Global panel has released a report named "Preventing nutrient loss and waste across the food system”.

Background

Traditionally, policies tackling food security have been towards increasing calorie intake.
Now the pressing challenge is to meet rising demand for a healthy diet rather than just calorie intake.
Access to diverse range of foods has become a growing policy priority as a result of increasing diet-related diseases.
Diet-related factors now account for six of the top nine contributors to the global burden of disease.
Further, non-communicable diseases due to obesity are also linked to poor-quality diets.
Globally, in 2016 one in five deaths were associated with poor diets.
Thus, the report highlights the strategic shift to reducing loss of wastage of nutritious food to deal with the problem of nutritional security.

Food loss

Food loss refers to a decrease in quantity or quality including appearance, flavour, texture and nutritional value of food intended for human consumption.

Food waste

It refers to the discarding of food appropriate for human consumption downstream in the value chain, particularly at the retail and consumer levels.

Key Findings

According to the report, post-harvest losses and waste of food across the globe is significant.
Fruits and vegetables have the highest overall rates of loss and waste for any food products
Of the 263 million metric tons of meat produced globally each year, over 20% is lost or wasted.
Globally, over 30% of the total fish and seafood harvested each year is lost or wasted.

Drivers of nutrient loss and waste