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KNOWLEDGE FOR POLICY

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Publication | 2024

Models of the triple burden of chronic hunger, hidden hunger, and overnutrition for use in foresight analysis

Food security projections encompass a range of metrics essential for policy planning. While caloric intake remains a critical indicator of food security, hunger and malnutrition metrics provide a more complete picture of nutritional well-being and long-term health outcomes across populations and over time. These metrics are important for policymakers to understand the long-term implications of food security interventions, as they highlight different dimensions of nutritional vulnerability and dietary imbalances. As such, they are key indicators for targeted investments and development programs aiming to improve food security at all scales (Webb et al., 2018). Among the available tools used for food security projections, the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) model is one of the most cited (van Dijk et al., 2021). Currently, IMPACT generates a limited set of food security metrics based on calorie intake, including undernourished children and share of population at risk of hunger. However, populations may have adequate calorie intake but suffer from significant deficiencies in micronutrients, leading to long-term health issues (FAO, 2020). Metrics related to hunger and malnutrition are not included in IMPACT and cannot be directly reflected in the model’s estimates of calories intake. To allow for more comprehensive food security projections with IMPACT, we have developed an IMPACT output module which estimates chronic hunger, hidden hunger, and overnutrition as a function of food demand solved by IMPACT. This development builds upon the pioneering efforts of Gödecke et al. (2018), Sulser et al. (2021), and Lenaerts and Demont (2021), who estimate the relationships between chronic and hidden hunger, dietary composition, and socioeconomic factors using Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). DALYS is a measure of hunger in terms of lost to nutritional deficiency. Applying the DALY measure in the IMPACT modeling environment has been previously attempted by Sulser et al. (2021), but the process never became formally part of the model code.