Food, Nutrition, and Public Policies

Today, more than half of the world's population is affected by some form or another of malnutrition, disease, nutritional deficiency and/or excess (obesity), and this situation is far from improving despite international programs. Indeed, nutrition problems are not limited to questions of quantities of calories nor to a biomedical approach. The modernization of the societies of the South, for example, have entailed a modification in their traditional food regimes, with ominous consequences from the nutrition point of view. Another approach is therefore necessary, more global and more complex in its applications; the first consists in placing nutritional well-being at the center of lifestyles, production, and consumption, and thus to reconsider the appropriate theoretical foundations of many policies and interventions.

It implies in particular a movement, which has already begun in the past few years, to consider nutrition questions in terms of Human Rights, but also the emergence of a new paradigm for world agriculture. Hence a set of proposals organized around three main lines:

* an efficient framing of nutritional policies;
* a commitment on the part of the agriculture and agribusiness sectors regarding the production of quality food;
* social mobilization around nutritional quality.