Source: USAID Blog

An influential thought leader shares why nutrition needs to cut across food security, humanitarian aid, and global health

A woman prepares kale for her family’s lunch in Kenya. / Photo Credit: Fintrac Inc.

Nutrition serves as the foundation for achieving nearly every one of USAID’s foremost development goals, including eradicating poverty, empowering women, and improving health.

USAID is strengthening its commitments to nutrition through Feed the Future, the whole-of-government global hunger initiative, which works towards ensuring safe, nutritious diets are affordable, particularly for women and children.

We spoke with new USAID Chief Nutritionist Patrick Webb to learn more about this cross-sectoral work, his goals and priorities, and why feeding people is important but isn’t enough for everyone to thrive.

Dr. Webb, you’re an influential voice working at the intersection of food policy, climate change, and nutrition, as well as on emergency humanitarian assistance and have held key nutrition positions, including Chief of Nutrition for the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP). What attracted you to the role of Chief Nutritionist at USAID?

When I realized this job was possible, it was super exciting. USAID has been a champion of nutrition going back to the ’60s and has always been respected by the global community. There was an opportunity to contribute to that heritage.

Right now with so many different crises — humanitarian, climatic, economic, and pandemics — it’s easy to forget how important good nutrition is.

So I thought, “Okay, now is the time.”

As we prepare for whatever comes after the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030, we need to pay even more attention to nutrition, food systems, and healthy diets.

A mother feeds her daughter yogurt prepared at home in Bangladesh. / Photo Credit: ACDI/VOCA, Feed the Future Bangladesh Production for Improved Nutrition Activity

Your role spans food security, humanitarian aid, and global health. Can you tell us more about the role of nutrition in all three?

One of the really exciting things about the role of Chief Nutritionist at USAID is that it’s Agency-wide, it’s not restricted to any one Bureau. Nutrition is woven into the fabric of the three different Bureaus. This is reflected in the Agency’s Multi-sectoral Nutrition Strategy, which is currently being revised to launch in 2025.

For example, nutrition is at the core of the humanitarian work of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which works to save lives during crises. This is typically mediated through addressing malnutrition, preventing it from occurring or becoming life-threatening. That’s at the core of saving lives.

In the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security, nutrition is at the core of food and agriculture systems. What foods are grown, how they are processed, and how we reduce food waste are key to supporting good nutrition.

And then, of course, nutrition in health systems. The Bureau for Global Health supports maternal nutrition, infant and young child feeding, and improved nutrition service delivery through the health system.

So I see it as a win-win-win when we can connect the dots across activities, policies, and partners to fully integrate nutrition work in each bureau and to amplify positive impacts.

An extension worker of Feed the Future Bangladesh Aquaculture and Nutrition Activity is demonstrating balanced and nutritious food to pregnant and lactating mothers at a training session in Jashore, Bangladesh. / Photo Credit: Noor Alam, WorldFish

An extension worker of Feed the Future Bangladesh Aquaculture and Nutrition Activity is demonstrating balanced and nutritious food to pregnant and lactating mothers at a training session in Jashore, Bangladesh. / Photo Credit: Noor Alam, WorldFish

What are your goals or priorities as USAID’s Chief Nutritionist?

I want us to prioritize our thinking, our actions, and our investments in three ways.

First, focus on healthy, nutritious diets for all. High ambitions are needed to bring collective investments to bear on increasing access to healthy diets. This requires global thought leadership and strategic engagement to elevate healthy diets into global target-setting agendas like the SDGs (in which goals relating to diets were absent).

Secondly, we need to highlight the demand-side perspective when we talk about food systems transformation. To achieve that, we need to link investments in higher agricultural productivity and market development with value chain and demand-side activities focused on nutrient-rich foods.

Third, place nutrition at the core of the climate crisis agenda. What we choose to eat globally and locally shapes the global food system that underpins our diets. The food system contributes about one-third of all human-emitted greenhouse gas emissions. Our choices around food production and consumption are major contributors to the climate crisis.

On the flip side, the climate crisis is a major threat to our food systems, through climate shocks to production, emerging pests and diseases, increased perishability and associated increase in food loss and waste. And those perishable foods, like fruits, vegetables, fish, and dairy, are precisely what we want everyone to consume more of.

We have to find ways to both produce and protect more of these foods if they’re going to make their way into people’s diets.

We also know that climate has physiological impacts on the health of pregnant women and children. Research has demonstrated linkages between extreme heat experienced by mothers in the first trimester and poor outcomes at birth. And beyond pregnancy and child growth, women in low- and middle-income countries are also disproportionately affected by heat stress linked to farm labor and fetching water.

Higher CO2 emissions and heat stress also have a number of indirect impacts on nutrition and well-being including mental health, the spread and infectious disease and, very importantly, the nutrient density of crops.

A mother feeds her young child a cup of milk in Rwanda. / Photo Credit: Jean Bizimana, USAID

Fighting global hunger is not just about sharing sufficient calories, but ensuring access to safe, nutritious food. What is the role of nutrition in strengthening our global food systems?

The world’s been experiencing multiple food-related crises that have impacted food prices, supply chains, and the availability and affordability of healthy diets. When people say we need to ‘grow more food’ to feed a population of 10 billion by 2050, I encourage reflection on what that really means.

We should aim to nourish those 10 billion people, not just feed them. Good nutrition is not based on calories alone. Calories are key to preventing hunger, but a diverse, safe, nutrient-rich diet underpins all forms of good nutrition. It is key to connect the dots from production to consumption. We should encourage the ability to access and the desire for healthy, nutritious diets.

Nutrition should be at the core of all program and policy designs, not just for USAID, but for national, global, and multilateral policies.

Students in India enjoy millet-based meals at school. / Photo Credit: Liam Wright, Smart Food, ICRISAT