Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2024

The quest for healthy diets: FAO’s work to secure nutritious food for all

Global Food and Nutrition Security

What should we be eating? Is there one right answer? Is it as simple as choosing to eat well? Food must be nutritious for us to grow, work and thrive. Is it? Hardly. Current agrifood systems are failing us. What we eat was historically rooted in a place, a soil, a culture; it would reflect understandings of self and community, of heritage and values. Yet this is ever less the case. Dietary diversity is being lost. Cost barriers further darken the outlook: for three billion of us, healthy diets are unaffordable, a mirage.The principles of healthy eating, we now know, are universal; the particulars are infinitely varied. Solutions for eating better – globally, locally, contextually – do exist. Some are proven. Ohers hold promise. These pages sum up FAO’s work to improve nutrition levels structurally, overhauling the way agrifood systems operate. By way of data, evidence, innovation and convening power.Our goal is simple: we want to make it so that all people have access to healthy food. Whatever that may mean in the place where they live.