A solid international consensus has emerged on the importance of nutrition for children’s development and well-being. At the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), the Member States of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) committed to developing policies, programmes and initiatives to ensure healthy diets throughout the children’s life cycle, emphasizing the potential of schools as platforms for integrated action. This Guide promotes a holistic and human rights-based approach to school food and nutrition, in which legislation is an indispensable tool to ensure the sustainability of public policy goals set by a country. In light of international law and standards, it provides practical information and guidance to develop or strengthen national legislation to improve food security and nutrition in schools as well as community development. The Guide presents a range of regulatory options and legislative examples of state practice that may contribute to building sound and coherent legal frameworks for school food and nutrition. It is a useful resource for law practitioners, policymakers, parliamentarians, and all actors who are involved in the design, implementation, or monitoring of school programmes and policies and most particularly, for those interested in taking legislative action (law-making or law reform).

Food Law and Policy surveys the elements of modern food law. It broadens the coverage of traditional food and drug law topics of safety, marketing, and nutrition, and includes law governing environment, international trade, and other legal aspects of the modern food system. The result is the first casebook that provides a comprehensive treatment of food law as a unique discipline. Key Features: Draws together cases with other regulatory materials such as rulemaking documents and agency requests for proposals for grant funding. Focuses on federal law and includes discussion of innovations in food law happening at the municipal, state and federal level. Covers the latest developments in food law.

The School food and nutrition - Global action plan seeks to consolidate and guide FAO’s synergistic efforts, setting out priority and concrete outputs to be achieved by 2026. Key activities are presented in the plan and organized according to the following action areas: 1. promote the uptake of and investment in holistic approaches to school food and nutrition (SFN); 2. enhance capacities to design, implement and monitor effective SFN interventions; 3. strengthen policy and legal frameworks that enable SFN implementation; and 4. mobilize resources for ensuring regular and better support to countries. These have been prioritized based on identified gaps and needs, and considering the Organization’s technical competence and organizational comparative advantage. Such activities are meant to be adapted, contextualized and implemented according to regional and national priorities. This publication is the result of a collective effort, and includes contributions from relevant technical units of FAO across global, regional and country levels. The development of this plan follows the publication and dissemination of the Organization’s School Food and Nutrition Framework, and provides the implementation roadmap to attain its expected results.

Setting nutrition guidelines and standards has been recommended internationally to ensure that school meals are in line with children’s nutrition needs and adequate to their context. This report provides a descriptive overview of the situation of school meal nutrition guidelines and standards in 33 low and middle-income countries as reported through a global survey. The report identifies key aspects to consider for stakeholders who are planning to develop or update their guidelines and standards in the context of school meal programmes.

School-based food and nutrition education (SFNE) helps schoolchildren and the school community to achieve lasting improvements in their food practices and outlooks; build the capacity to change and to adapt to external change; and pass on their learning to others. SFNE has also an important role in complementing efforts that are being made globally to improve food environments, and in empowering children and adolescents to become active participants in shaping the food system to be better able to deliver healthy and sustainable diets. Despite increasing interest for SFNE, the evidence that supports it and its potential, much of traditional SFNE, particularly in LMICs, is largely underfunded, not delivering results, and disconnected from other key interventions that aim to support the food, nutrition, environment, and education nexus. SFNE is under-resourced, with capacity development opportunities lacking throughout the school system.This White Paper is the first document of its kind, and it is based on the evidence, professional expertise, and field experience, lessons learned, and documented challenges of SFNE work in a variety of contexts. It presents the case for raising the profile and transforming the vision and learning model of SFNE. This document is directed firstly to a technical audience working in governmental organizations that deal with schoolchildren and adolescents and is also of interest to researchers, technical advisors, decision-makers, donors and investors, civil society, and UN organizations.

Even though substantial progress has been achieved worldwide in reducing both poverty and malnutrition, much is yet to be done. There are signs that the progress made in both dimensions has stalled in recent years. Poor-quality diets have become a major driver for overweight and obesity and associated non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases, and some types of cancers. Conflict and climate vulnerability have been identified as major obstacles to reaching Sustainable Development Goal targets related to malnutrition by 2030. In 2019, economic downturns and slowdowns hindered efforts even further. More recently, the COVID-19 crisis has imposed even harsher conditions to countries.Poverty and malnutrition are inevitably linked, and therefore addressing one can help address the other. Given that most of the world’s extremely poor people and stunted children live primarily in rural areas and rely mostly on agriculture, the agriculture and food systems approach can offer an opportunity to reduce both poverty and malnutrition. The food systems approach places equal emphasis on both the supply and demand dimensions that are critical for ensuring healthier diets and better nutrition for poor and vulnerable groups.This special issue of Policy in Focus is dedicated to answering a crucial question: How can a food systems approach be used to design and implement policies and investments that reach those most vulnerable to poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and suboptimal diets? We hope that the contributions contained in this volume, by leading academics and development practitioners, exploring the linkages between nutrition, food systems, and poverty, can help stakeholders and policymakers make inroads towards the promotion of food and nutrition security and the reduction of rural poverty.

This book aims to contribute the knowledge and understanding of nutritional impact of food systems. Focus is also be given to food systems elements status identification, policy analysis to examine potential effects of different policy options throughout the food system, in particular policies in agriculture, food marketing and trade, social protection, gender, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on food industry, nutrition, and environment and education etc. Good practice and lessons learnt to strengthen the beneficiary countries’ evidence-base for addressing nutrition related challenges from the food system perspective.