Nutrition
Malnutrition in all its forms is the biggest global burden of disease, making it crucial to crucial to transform food systems so they deliver affordable, safe, and nutrient-rich diets for everyone. Read more, including some key resources and latest news.
Context
Malnutrition
... in all its forms, which includes undernutrition, overweight/obesity and micronutrient deficiency, impacts one in three people in the world, and unhealthy diets are the number one cause of global mortality. Healthy diets prevent malnutrition and contribute to higher educational outcomes, productivity and lifelong health. Every dollar invested in transforming diets and food systems could yield many times that back in health, economic and environmental benefits — with up to 16 times return on investment, with the potential to save millions of lives. Switzerland advocates for safe, healthy, nutritious, affordable, diverse and desirable diets for all from sustainable local value chains, and supports nutrition-sensitive interventions, innovations, regulations and policies as well as scaled investments, involving in particular young people and women, and other most-vulnerable groups
Nutrition
SDC’s main nutrition priorities
- Enabling conducive framework conditions for healthy diets for all, particularly the most vulnerable groups – which can be done notably by tracking nutrition trends and influencing policy through diet quality data; by promoting regulatory capacities for ex. of food environment; by strengthening human right-based legislation for food; by strengthening coordination and multi-stakeholder and multisectoral dialogue;
- Strengthening nutrition-sensitive rural-urban value chains for a healthy and diverse local diet and improved livelihoods with inclusive and participatory markets and governance;
- Enhancing consumers’ awareness, demand and access for healthy and sustainably produced food through capacity building, information and behaviour change;
- Preventing and treating acute and chronic undernutrition among most vulnerable groups (in particular via partners’ interventions, using for example cash transfers);
- Encourage localisation of food production and consumption both for short-term (emergency) interventions as well as long-term development, to improve among others food traceability.
SDC’s main approach
SDC works on nutrition with a multistakeholder, multi-sectoral and rights-based approach, drawing on humanitarian and development instruments, and lobbies for a change in food systems to make them more sustainable, nutrition-enhancing and healthy. The engagement of the civil society and the private sector is also crucial, as they both play a central role in promoting and providing healthy diets.
SDC relies on both :
- nutrition-specific interventions, which supply the individuals with the necessary macro- and micronutrients to avoid deficiencies or treat severe malnutrition ; as well as
- nutrition-sensitive interventions, which address the underlying causes of malnutrition, such as access to sufficient, diverse and affordable food, to clean water and sanitation, to health care services and social protection schemes which embed nutrition in their programmes, as well as the empowerment of women as key actors for assuring diverse and nutritious diets.
Key resources
How to address nutrition in development work
Knowledge Hub, SDC A&FS Network
Thematic Integration Brief – Food systems and Health
Knowledge Hub, SDC A&FS Network
Impact Investing for Nutrition: Principles for Action
ATNi, October 2025
Report on Healthy, Sustainable, and Just Food Systems
EAT-Lancet Commission, October 2025
Action framework for developing and implementing public food procurement and service policies for a healthy diet
WHO technical document, January 2021
Mobilizing additional financial resources for nutrition
Prepared for SDC by Clarmondial AG, November 2020
Authors: Tanja Havemann and Christian Speckhardt
Sustainable Healthy Diets - Guiding Principles
FAO and WHO 2019
Nutrition and food systems
A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition,
September 2017
