This new tool encourages policymakers to address the real-life challenges people face in their daily food practices, from financial insecurity to cultural norms, ensuring more effective diet-related policies and interventions. Perspective: The full picture of people’s realities must be considered to deliver better diets for all . Image Credit: udra11 / Shutterstock In a recent perspective published in the journal Nature Foods , experts proposed a tool to holistically integrate psychosocial, economic, and material conditions to guide policymakers and researchers in designing and evaluating diet-related policies and interventions.
This tool could help address dietary inequalities within and across households, families, food environments, social interactions, and cultures. Rethinking Global Nutrition Despite numerous policies and interventions, most people worldwide do not follow dietary guidelines, and marginalized populations are most affected by nutritional inequalities. Diet quality has shown little to no improvement, contributing to non-communicable diseases, obesity, and undernutrition.
Current diets are also not sustainable for the planet. Existing interventions often have limited, short-lived, modest, or small-scale impacts. Researchers believe that a better understanding of people’s realities, including their everyday material and social experiences, is needed to improve the effectiveness of nutrition programs.
These factors influence people's relationships with foo.
