The world is witnessing shifts in dietary patterns with extremes of hunger and excess weight, forcing us all to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible to everyone, and to reflect on what we eat.
This was the theme for this year’s UN World Food Day marked yesterday: ‘Our Actions Are Our Future. Healthy Diets for a #zerohunger World’, which calls for action across every sector.
Conversations on healthy diets at international ministerial meetings, with NGOs, or even in schools, no longer focus solely on what and how much to eat for sustenance, but also on the larger food system and its impacts on human and planetary health.
FAO statistics show that, on a global level, more than 670 million adults and 120 million boys and girls aged five to 19 are obese, while over 40 million children under five are overweight.
By contrast, more than 820 million people suffer from hunger.
We are witnessing loss in biodiversity due in part to intensified farming and the impact of climate change, as well as an increasing reliance on processed, unhealthy foods due primarily to changing lifestyles, rural-to-urban migration and the global food supply.
The UN’s main recommendations on this day are for everybody to start reflecting more on their food choices and for action to be taken in different sectors so that all humans are able to access healthy, sustainable diets.
Statistics from Malta’s 2015 Household Budgetary Survey illustrate that, while 25.9 per cent of all expenditure by households in the lowest income quartile is on food and non-alcoholic beverages, these costs only amount to 15.5 per cent of expenditure by households in the highest income quartile.
Moreover, the price of food has increased over the past year, with an overall 3.74 per cent annual inflation rate as at August 2019.
Higher prices of takeaway foods have been identified as a main contributor to this figure.
Yet, if one excludes takeaways and restaurant services, the annual inflation rate for food remains high at 3.39 per cent.
Volunteers at local food banks also speak about the growing number of regular patrons, which is a likely symptom of food price increases and an inability to purchase adequate, nutritious food for personal or family use from available income.
We must look to our farms, not to our pharmacies, to solve our nutrition-related problems
Our local health authorities re-commend a Mediterranean-type diet of fresh, wholesome and less refined foods.
Vegetables, fruit, wholegrain cereals, dairy products and olive oil feature in the guidelines on daily food intake and fish and meat in the guidance for weekly intake. But this diet may be hard to achieve by all Maltese households.
In a society where lifestyles have become more hectic for many families, where there is heavy reliance on imported foods – and where there are close to 80,000 at risk of poverty – citizens, food providers, policymakers and all those who have a role in the food supply chain need to work together to align decisions and actions for efficient and just access to good nutrition.
The government’s Social Fund Targeting Students in Difficulty is one such action, contributing to students’ food intake to improve their educational development and experience.
Currently, a total of 450 Maltese and non-Maltese students from different primary, middle and secondary schools around Malta benefit from the provision of free, healthy packed lunches on a daily basis.
Over the past three years, the Malta Foundation for the Well-being of Society (MFWS) has conducted a number of studies related to food production and consumption and the various stakeholders involved, and different factors have been identified as influencing food choices.
From the consumer perspective, these include the price of food and the willingness to pay for better quality, the perceived time availability for food preparation, information overload or vacuum and anxieties linked to these, and groupie effects around sustainable food trends.
From the producer perspective, a clear lamentation emerged on the disconnect between local farmers, fishermen and consumers, coupled with the negative image which persists in relation to farmers.
The MFWS has spearheaded discussions with farmers to better understand the challenges they face in securing their own livelihood, while sharing ideas and strategies for supplying food that meets local dietary guidelines, is produced sustainably, safeguards and revives indigenous species and varieties, and is accessible and affordable by all.
Young farmers in particular are keen to be innovative and the whole farming sector looks forward to a better public valuation of their work.
Consumer sustainability education, training for farmers, policy measures on fresh food for low-income families, more creative partnerships for research and actions between NGOs, state and industry are just a few of the recommendations mentioned in the MFWS’s studies.
Clearly, there is much more that can be done in Malta to be in line with the theme of World Food Day to nourish people while also nurturing the planet. There is ample goodwill among consumers, producers, NGOs, policymakers and even industry to make this happen.
One point of departure could be the recommendation by Colo-thur Gopalan, first honorary life member of the World Public Health Nutrition Association. He said: “We must look to our farms, not to our pharmacies, to solve our nutrition-related problems.”
Suzanne Piscopo is an expert with the National Centre for Family Research within the Malta Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society.