shiftframework.org

Child-centered food systems: reorienting food systems towards healthy diets for children

Equity Focus

This study addresses a 6-step assessment tool that uses methods to identify and reorient food systems towards healthy, child-centered diets from a nutrition perspective. To connect the dots between children's lives, their food environments and food supply systems.

Case Summary

A child-centered food system makes healthy diets available, affordable, appealing and aspirational. This project developed a package of actions to coherently reorient food systems towards healthy diets for children. This is presented in a novel 6-step assessment tool using mixed methods to identify these actions. The tool starts with the context in which children live their lives and works back upstream. All steps are needed in order to identify the right mix of actions to work in coherence across the food system.

Lessons Learned

• The case study spells out the mix of methods needed to make this assessment, gives examples of the data and studies already available and type of insights they provide, and discusses the methodological challenges and gaps. It presents a worked example that shows how following these steps in sequence enables the identification of a package of actions that can act coherently to reorient food systems in the way most likely to have impact on child malnutrition.

LINK TO CASE STUDY