10 November 2014: The UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Earth System Governance Project have published POST2015/UNU-IAS Policy Brief #6, titled ‘Ending the Double Burden of Malnutrition: Addressing the Food and Health Nexus in the Sustainable Development Goals.’ The authors stress that improvement in economic conditions can lead to higher obesity risk, and suggest that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address this by correlating targets and indicators, and delivery of educational programmes to increase health literacy globally.

Masahiko Iguchi, Tomoki Ehara, Eri Yamazaki, Tomohiro Tasaki, Naoya Abe, Seiji Hashimoto and Taro Yamamoto authored the policy brief, and argue that to achieve the “end hunger” target of the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG 1), a sole focus on economic growth is not sufficient, and that fair distribution of nutrition among people also is required.

Moreover, to end the “double burden” of malnutrition and the challenge of dealing with undernourishment and obesity, more focus should be placed on eliminating food disparity, they add. The authors recommend setting an ambitious nutritional distribution disparity target to reduce the Interquartile Range (IQR) of the distribution of calorific intake by 50%.

This POST2015/UNU-IAS Policy Brief is the sixth in a series. [Earth System Governance Press Release] [Publication: Ending the Double Burden of Malnutrition: Addressing the Food and Health Nexus in the Sustainable Development Goals] [Policy Brief Series]