Work Packages
WP1
Consumers and their food environment
Governance and inclusive food systems
WP3
Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and the informal sector
WP2
Trade-off scenario analysis
WP4
Innovations designed and tested
Innovations integrated in coherent food systems transformation policies
Capacity built to assess
trade-offs and implement
food systems transformation processes
Catalyzing food systems transformation
WP5
Innovation
Integration
Catalyzation
Long-
term Outcomes
CGIAR Impact Areas
Priority
Secondary
Nutrition, health
& food security
Poverty reduction, livelihoods & jobs
Gender equality, youth
& social inclusion
Climate adaptation & mitigation
Environmental health
& biodiversity
Increased consumption of sustainable healthy diets
Increased supply
of sustainable nutritious foods
Higher incomes
Reduced inequalities
Working closely with local, national, regional, and global partners, the Sustainable Healthy Diets Initiative will use an innovative, consumer-focused perspective to understand how to increase demand for and access to sustainable healthy diets. During the Initiative’s first three years (2022–2024), activities will be focused on Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam. Work will expand to Benin, Guatemala, Honduras, India, and Senegal from 2025 to 2030.
The Sustainable Healthy Diets Initiative’s work involves stakeholders at multiple stages of the food system, from individual consumers to businesses that sell food and employ workers, on to decision-makers at the national or subnational level. The Initiative will generate knowledge about diets and food system actors; propose solutions that address barriers to achieving sustainable healthy diets; and develop decision-support tools to tackle trade-offs. These activities, in turn, will support the development of context-specific pathways for food systems transformation.
The Initiative’s activities span five Work Packages (WP) that intersect and inform each other. Click the WP icons below to learn more.
WP1
Consumers and their food environment
This WP will characterize food consumption and dietary patterns among marginalized populations and identify key drivers and inequalities, including between genders. This work will inform the co-design, testing, and evaluation of scalable solutions in the food environment-consumer nexus.
Objectives
1. Characterize people’s food consumption, dietary patterns, and nutritional and health status, particularly among marginalized populations.
2. Describe the food environments (FEs) of marginalized populations, how FEs shape dietary patterns, and how consumers shape FEs.
3. Evaluate potentially scalable consumer- and/or FE-focused policies, innovations, and guidelines to shift consumption patterns toward sustainable healthy diets.
Outputs
1. Evidence on consumption patterns among marginalized groups and on individual and FE drivers
2. Tools, methods, metrics, and summary indicators for measuring sustainable healthy diets and FEs
3. A set of effective scalable policies, innovations, and guidelines to improve consumption of sustainable healthy diets by marginalized groups
Objectives
1. Support MSMEs and informal actors that can supply and sell more affordable sustainable nutritious foods in food environments.
2. Identify innovations to overcome MSME- and system-level constraints inhibiting the delivery and sale of sustainable nutritious foods to marginalized populations.
3. Evaluate innovations that help MSMEs and informal actors deliver sustainable nutritious foods to marginalized populations.
Outputs
1. Typology of wholesalers, processors, caterers, and retailers who have potential to deliver more sustainable nutritious foods
2. Evidence base of scalable interventions that overcome barriers to sustainable nutritious foods and maintain/increase decent employment
3. Stakeholder guidelines for facilitating youth and female employment in MSMEs and the informal sector in wholesale, processing, catering, and retail
This WP will identify and promote scalable, evidence-based innovations and policies to help these actors and enterprises increase their delivery of sustainable nutritious foods and provide decent employment for women and youth in particular.
WP2
Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and the informal sector
Objectives
1. Identify policy and governance lock-ins and barriers that keep food systems on their current unsustainable trajectories.
2. Document policy and governance lessons derived from system transitions and transformations in other sectors.
3. Propose and support adoption of governance and policy solutions to address structural barriers and enable food systems to transition toward more sustainable outcomes.
Outputs
1. Diagnosis analyses completed at the country level
2. Lessons learned from the transformation of other sectors
This WP will identify the policy “lock-ins” (intractable decisions) and barriers that disrupt food system contributions to healthy diets, fair livelihoods, and sustainable environments, and propose context-specific and evidence-based solutions.
WP3
Governance and inclusive food systems
Objectives
1. Identify and quantify trade-offs among food systems outcomes, including sustainable healthy diets, income distribution, gender and social equality, decent employment, food safety, and environmental impacts.
2. Develop decision-support tools based on food systems trade-off and scenario analysis.
3. Raise awareness and improve capacity of (sub)national stakeholders to navigate food systems trade-offs and policy prioritization.
Outputs
1. Trade-offs between various outcomes quantified at the (sub)national level
2. Decision-support tools and other resources for policymakers and stakeholders to assess policy implications, navigate trade-offs, and prioritize policies
This WP will develop, test, and apply decision-support tools to analyze trade-offs, and use those tools to raise stakeholders’ awareness and capacity to understand and navigate the potential tensions resulting from food system innovations and policies.
WP4
Trade-off scenario analysis
Objectives
1. Engage in national multistakeholder consultative processes to develop and support food systems transformation.
2. Monitor and document food systems transformation in the target countries.
3. Develop capacity to engage in, support, and monitor food systems transformation toward sustainable healthy diets.
Outputs
1. An established, functional multistakeholder platform/network in target countries
2. Procedures, tools, and metrics to monitor progress toward transformative pathways
3. Engagement with in-country multistakeholder consultative processes
4. Learning framework and trajectory to extract lessons learned and to identify next steps in transformative pathways
This WP will engage in national food systems processes to identify, co-design, support, and learn from context-specific pathways for food systems transformation toward sustainable healthy diets.
WP5
Catalyzing food systems transformation