"Regulations, awareness, advocacy to change for healthier diets Professor Corinna Hawkes Director, Centre for Food Policy City, University of London, UK Co-Chair, Global Nutrition Report "
"www.fao.org/about/meetings/sustainable-food-systems-nutrition-symposium
The International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition was jointly held by FAO and WHO in December 2016 to explore policies and programme options for shaping the food systems in ways that deliver foods for a healthy diet, focusing on concrete country experiences and challenges. This Symposium waas the first large-scale contribution under the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition 2016-2025. This presentation was part of Parallel session 2.1: Regulations, awareness and advocacy for better informed food choices"
"Regulations, awareness, advocacy to change for healthier diets Professor Corinna Hawkes Director, Centre for Food Policy City, University of London, UK Co-Chair, Global Nutrition Report "
1.
2. Professor Corinna Hawkes
Director, Centre for Food Policy
City, University of London, UK
Co-Chair, Global Nutrition Report
@corinnahawkes
Regulations, awareness, advocacy to
change for healthier diets
3. Hierarchy
of levels to
change
demand for
healthier diets
through
regulation,
awareness,
advocacy
2. Food
environments
3. Food supply systems
1. Food eaters (people)
Agricultural
production
subsystem
Food storage,
transport and trade
subsystem
Food
transformation
subsystem
Food retail &
provisioning
subsystem
The food system
4. Let’s follow a parent/caregiver who
wants to provide healthy diets for their
family going about their day…..
Let’s imagine how regulations
can change social norms to
support parents & help their kids
learn to prefer & demand healthy
diets
Let’s think why it is that kids grow up
learning not to want healthy diets …
1. Regulations on
content of food
2. Regulations on retail
provision in communities
3. Regulations on standards of
foods served in pubic institutions
4. Regulations
on economic
dis-incentives
5. Regulations on
labelling
6. Regulations restricting
unhealthy marketing
5.
6. What we can learn
1. Effective regulations start with understanding the reality of people’s
lives
– What people are eating; why they are eating it
2. Regulations exist to support norm change for people and businesses
– By reducing unhealthy intrusions into people’s lives, regulations
increase demand for better diets
3. A small number of well-designed regulations would have high
impact
– Package combined with actions designed to create awareness
increases demand for action
People make decisions about what to eat based on a wide variety of factors. They include personal likes and dislikes, knowledge and skills; socioeconomic factors (e.g. income), demographic factors (e.g. age), economic (cost of food) and physical access (e.g. to stores, cooking facilities); and external influences that make some foods more attractive than others, like advertising.
In practice, all these factors interlink with each other and they all come together in every individual to infleunce what people like and what peole buy.
So the first core entry point for improving healthy diets are people themselves – to target their knowledge, skills, motivations and intentions through BCC, education, awareness, giving skills, as well as provide social and economic support.
But to ensure sustainable change we have to also focus on what is influencing peoples preferences and shaping how they spend their income in the first place: the environments around them.
And then we have to think: what is influencing these food environments. The food supply systems that underpin them.
Together this comprises the food system and indicates that there are many entry points for actions to improve healthier diets
What I will be focusing is on is food environments around peole how we can effectively use regulation to improve them so that the healthier choice becomes not only the easier choice, but the preferred choice. The food environment is criticall important because it is where eaters meet the food system
Educated person – has been exposed to diet awareness campaigns, diet counselling in pregnancy, relative with diabetes, knows how bad it is, wants to eat well and have her kids learn how to eat well
TV image, marketing
Assume its healthy for berakfast – clains, reformulation
Rout to school Stores
In school, public settings
Stores – cookies with vitamin a
Soda cheaper than juice, economic
Promotions, marketing
No labels, labelling
She cannot gets what she –needs – and even wore, her kids re pikcing up unhealthy habits
Now lest imagine a diffeernt scebario – with regs
Changes
Then another one –
Not helping with the motivation – but also need to uncover why not motivated
How do you motivate peole to change their behaviour?
Then 3, not knowledgeable
Need awareness and education to give people knowledge, but that alone won’t do it
Then go through the regs
What we can learn
1, Regulations will be ineffective if well-designed
2. Ideally would not need any regulation – about changing social and business norms
3.
But it will take boldness and courage to do so. Lets reject the myths about what
Recent efforts have focused on changing the context, creating environments where the healthy food choice is the easy choice, and where all residents, especially those experiencing health inequities due to social determinants of health, have the tools to needed overcome related barriers.