Nutrition solutions alone are not enough
As food and nutrition experts, it can feel natural to frame every big health challenge, whether it’s hunger, malnutrition, or chronic disease, in terms of food and nutrients. After all, our training and research are deeply rooted in understanding what people eat, how it affects the body, and how we can guide healthier choices. Everyone eats and it's what we care about.
But, we need to acknowledge that food and nutrition solutions alone will never be enough if they aren’t grounded in the bigger picture.
Yes, nutrition education, diet planning, food choices, and new food innovations matter. But hunger, chronic disease and malnutrition aren’t solely caused by people not knowing what foods the 'should' eat. These choices exist in the context of larger and more complex structural forces. Forces that shape not just what we choose for our plates, but which foods we can choose, when and how we can choose them, and what the costs are (time, money and other resource costs).
To truly make progress, we need to centre nutrition within the broader context of:
Socioeconomic determinants of health: Income, housing stability, education, and employment profoundly shape what food people can buy, cook, and eat. Nutrition guidance that ignores poverty or precarity risks blaming individuals for systemic problems.
Food security and sovereignty: It’s not just about producing enough food globally, but ensuring communities have consistent, dignified access to safe and culturally appropriate food. Supply chains, pricing, and availability all matter just as much as nutrients.
Capitalism and inequality: Our food environments don’t emerge in a vacuum. They exist in the context of the rest of our economies and societies. Raging about convenience and processing and how these foods impact health feels useful and moral, but won't get us very far if we don't understand and address the gaps these products fill.
Policy and power: From agricultural subsidies to urban planning, political choices shape the food landscape. But it's not just the food related ones, it's the income support policies, the labour laws, the public transport... Nutrition advice without advocacy for better policy risks being a band-aid solution.
As experts, we shouldn’t stop offering nutrition solutions, they do matter, they are part of the puzzle. But we need to be clear that they are part of a bigger system, that we are just some of the pieces. When we talk about malnutriton, let’s also talk about wages. When we talk about chronic disease let’s also talk about inequities in healthcare and lifestyle opportunities. When we talk about obesity, let’s also talk about housing, stress, and structural racism.
By keeping the larger context in focus, we strengthen the impact of our work, we don't dilute it. Food and nutrition are essential parts of the puzzle, but they will only create real, lasting change when we place them within the economic, political, and social systems that shape how we eat.
