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. 2023 Feb 8;7(5):100028.
doi: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2023.100028. eCollection 2023 May.

Beyond the Food Systems Summit: Linking Recommendations to Action-The True Cost of Food

Eileen T Kennedy  1 , Maximo A Torero  2 , Dariush Mozaffarian  1 , William A Masters  1 , Roy A Steiner  3 , Sheryl L Hendriks  4 , Jamie A Morrison  5 , Kathleen K Merrigan  6 , Shibani A Ghosh  1 , Daniel E Mason-d'Croz  7
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Beyond the Food Systems Summit: Linking Recommendations to Action-The True Cost of Food

Eileen T Kennedy et al. Curr Dev Nutr. .

Abstract

A transformation of food systems is needed to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals specified in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recognizing the true costs and benefits of food production and consumption can help guide public policy decisions to effectively transform food systems in support of sustainable healthy diets. A new, expanded framework is presented that allows the quantification of costs and benefits in three domains: health, environmental, and social. The implications for policy makers are discussed. Curr Dev Nutr 2023;x:xx.

Keywords: United Nations Food Systems Summit; agriculture; metrics; nutrition; true cost accounting; true value of food.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The staircase approach to measuring access as affordability of least-cost diets. Note: The use of least-cost items by food group as a metric of access to healthy diets across countries and over time was initiated by Masters et al. [6], with this staircase model of access to each level of diet quality first published in Herforth et al. [7] by the Food Prices for Nutrition project (https://sites.tufts.edu/foodpricesfornutrition).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Structure and example elements for true cost accounting to guide food choices. Note: Rows are grouped by stage of product life cycle, from farm production through postharvest transformation and delivery, to final use in meal preparation and consumption. Colors indicate the three domains of external costs, defined in terms of environmental sustainability and natural resource use in green, social sustainability and equity in yellow, and health outcomes for the population in orange. Columns show examples of external costs, external benefits, and transfers within the population where one person’s loss is another person’s gain. This accounting framework was developed for Martinez and Masters [11] as part of the Food Prices for Nutrition project (https://sites.tufts.edu/foodpricesfornutrition). GHG, greenhouse gas.
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References

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