Transforming Food Systems for Healthier Lives: Launch of the CGIAR Better Diets and Nutrition Science Program

In a world where nearly three billion people still cannot afford a healthy diet, transforming our food systems has become an urgent priority. The official launch of the CGIAR Better Diets and Nutrition (BDN) Science Program during the CGAIR Science Week 2025, marked a significant step toward tackling this global crisis by prioritizing the affordability, accessibility, availability, desirability of sustainable healthy diets (SHD) and consumer agency to make sustainable healthy choices, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). BDN focuses on addressing undernutrition, overnutrition, and diet-related non-communicable diseases by adopting a food systems approach that starts with diets rather than food production.

The BDN strategy dialogue brought together global experts, researchers, donors, national and international NGOs, students, private sector and other stakeholders from diverse sectors to delve into the program’s ambitions, approaches, and key areas of focus.

Why Better Diets and Nutrition?

Inge Brouwer, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI and Interim Director of BDN, introduced the program’s mission, structure, and strategic approach. BDN is the only CGIAR science group dedicated specifically to sustainable healthy diets as a key outcome of food systems transformation, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

The program aims to make sustainable healthy diets affordable, accessible, available and desirable in an equitable way by delivering evidence-based solutions and decision-making tools.

BDN addresses these systemic challenges through six key areas of work:

1. Consumers and Food Environments – Understanding how people make food choices and making healthy options easy, appealing, and default choice and how these can be addressed through food system transformation processes.
2. Market Systems – Supporting small and medium enterprises to enhance access to nutritious, safe, and diverse foods, while creating income and employment opportunities—especially for women and youth.
3. End-to-end solutions for increasing intake of perishable nutrient-rich foods– Promoting fruits, vegetables, animal-source and aquatic foods, while acknowledging trade-offs like environmental impacts.
4. Biofortified and Health-Enhancing Staples – Addressing nutrient gaps and contributing to preventing health risks through biofortified and health-enhancing staple foods where necessary.
5. Multi-Sectoral Systems – Combining diet improvement efforts with social protection, water, sanitation, and health systems interventions for greater impact.
6. Transformative Leadership– Strengthening integration across CGIAR and building global leadership in diet centered food systems transformation.

The participants discussed each area of work in detail through a world café model. The participants had interactive discussions with each Area of Work (AoW) after a short engaging 5-minute presentation by one of the scientific leads on what the AoW is doing and how it is contributing to achieving the overall goal of the BDN. The participants engaged actively and raised a range of thought-provoking questions and comments across various AoWs. For example, the discussions highlighted the need for consumer-facing interventions like front-of-package labeling, paired with nutrition education, while also stressing the importance of addressing broader food system issues such as food availability, affordability, and the marketing of unhealthy products. Participants emphasized the cultural shifts away from traditional diets and suggested leveraging celebrities to promote traditional foods. Important queries were raised around fair pricing for farmers, online marketing for healthy foods, and the need to define concepts like “food quality.” Participants also explored overlaps with other CGIAR Initiatives, opportunities for collaboration—particularly with climate and advocacy streams—and the importance of policy linkages and capacity building. Across the board, the level of engagement reflected a strong interest and enthusiasm in making the BDN relevant, actionable, and inclusive of local contexts.

Voices from the Panel

The event culminated in a compelling panel discussion featuring leaders like Dao The Anh, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Sali Atanga Ndindeng, Africa Rice, and Charlotte Bailey, FCDO, moderated by Charlotte Hebebrand, IFPRI.

Dao The Anh, a partner with the AoW focusing on consumers and their food environment, was asked to reflect on the usefulness of a science program like BDN for the work he is doing in Vietnam as convenor of the Vietnam Foos System Transformation national action plan. He mentioned that Vietnam faces a “triple burden” of malnutrition—undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and rising obesity due to ultra-processed food consumption in remote and urban areas. Dr. Dao emphasized the need for a food systems approach backed by strong evidence to identify gaps, promote intersectoral coordination, and guide national action plans. He stressed the importance of communication and raising public awareness about nutritious diets.

Sally Atangan Ninding, representing AfricaRice and the CGIAR Scaling for Impact Accelerator (S4I) reflected on the entry points and collaborations between BDN and S4I. He emphasized the need for early and integrated collaboration to support the BDN. He highlighted the importance of aligning shared goals and jointly identifying scalable innovations such as biofortified crops and nutrition-sensitive value chains. Sally advocated for co-designing strategies that focus on priority geographies and target populations, while leveraging tools like the scaling readiness framework, bundling approaches, public-private partnership models, and business models. He underscored the value of creating multi-stakeholder platforms to bring together actors across nutrition, agriculture, public health, and the private sector. Additionally, he stressed the need for harmonized monitoring and evaluation frameworks and emphasized joint learning and capacity sharing to ensure lasting impact.

Charlotte Bailey, Advisor with the Food and Agriculture Research Team at Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), United Kingdom, reflected on whether BDN is responding to the funder demands. She emphasized that nutrition remains a core priority for FCDO, especially from a research and development perspective, despite evolving funding landscapes. She encouraged the nutrition community to clearly articulate priority challenges and geographic focus areas aligning with cross-cutting themes like climate and gender, and integrate nutrition into broader programming. Charlotte highlighted the value of tangible, non-technical impact stories to effectively advocate for nutrition, citing examples like the vitamin A biofortified sweet potato and the food affordability metric used in Nigeria, which contributed to a minimum wage increase. Her key message: in a time of shifting resources, clear, compelling narratives about why nutrition matters are essential for sustaining attention and investment.

The Better Diets and Nutrition Science Program represents more than a new research agenda—it’s a call to action to reimagine how we nourish the world. Through evidence, innovation, and collective leadership, BDN is paving the way toward a future where sustainable healthy diets are not a privilege, but a right—for everyone, everywhere.

Watch the full event HERE. You can find the photos from the event HERE.

For more information, visit https://www.cgiar.org/cgiar-research-porfolio-2025-2030/better-diets-and-nutrition/