Poor diets are a primary cause of malnutrition and the leading cause of diseases worldwide. Improving diets, including increasing fruit and vegetable intake, could save one in five lives lost annually. Micronutrients and dietary fibre are essential for health; micronutrients from fruit and vegetables have a lower environmental footprint than from other foods, making fruit and vegetables essential to healthy and sustainable diets. Globally, fruit and vegetable intake is far below recommended levels, however, the extent and nature of the problem is poorly understood due to insufficient dietary data, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
The ‘Fruits and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets’ Initiative (FRESH) is a 3 year project coordinated by CGIAR centers and partners that uses an ‘end-to-end’ approach targeting all parts of the food system to improve accessibility of fruits and vegetables and increase year-round supply of a diverse range of safe, affordable, nutrient-dense vegetables. It is hoped that improving understanding of consumers’ dietary patterns and addressing desirability, accessibility, affordability, and availability barriers through cost-effective solutions will result in increased fruit and vegetable intake, improved diet quality, nutrition and health while also improved livelihoods, women and youth empowerment and mitigation of negative environmental impacts.
IDS is a core partner involved in the ‘Food Environment’ component which focuses on research to understand how to best develop or influence food environments to improve consumer access to and affordability of diverse and safe fruits and vegetables. Drawing on recent food system work on food environments, researchers at IDS together with in-country partners including Colombo Urban Lab and the World Vegetable Centre alongside other FRESH partners are beginning with research and diagnostics of food environments in the focus countries of Sri Lanka and Tanzania (with other partners leading work in Benin and the Philippines) in order to to co-design interventions and innovations to improve food environments that can be operationalized by FRESH partners. Researchers will particularly focus on marginalized groups exposed to poor food environments and those at most risk for poor quality diets and all forms of malnutrition.
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