To arouse the world's great attention to the development of food and agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) designated October 16th as World Food Day in November 1979 and implemented it in 1981. The theme of this year's World Food Day is "Our Actions Are Our Future. Healthy Diets for A #ZeroHunger World”.
Let's start with food safety. In March and July of this year, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) held two conferences on food safety, mainly focusing on the importance of agricultural diversity protection for food safety. At the same time, the CBCGDF also promoted the Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) to focus on the issue of food and agriculture diversity. All the meetings and conferences held by the CBCGDF are strongly supported by FAO.
As for healthy diets. So far, more than 800 million people around the world are still suffering from hunger every day. At the same time, however, more than two billion people are overweight or obese. Food problems cause social injustice and also bring huge public health costs. Today, for the first time in history, the death rate of non-communicable diseases caused by an unhealthy lifestyle (mainly diet) exceeds that of communicable diseases.
One of the most important but easily overlooked points is that food health is not only related to everyone's health but also related to the overall survival crisis of human beings.
This is by no means alarmist. By 2050, the earth's population will reach 10 billion. To support those people, the earth has to bear more human development and demand. The fragile ecological balance will be even more in crisis. At that time, food health will become an important means to resolve the crisis.
According to the new 2019 EAT-Lancet report, food is the strongest lever to leverage public health and change the earth's environment. Changing the way food is consumed and produced is the most powerful tool for us to change human health and planet health.
Therefore, the Good Food Fund of the CBCGDF issued the “Good Food Pledge”, aims to call on people to “eat well”. The first “well” is to be good to yourself, and the second "well" is to be good to nature. It aims to change human health and the earth's health by changing the way food is consumed and produced. "Changing the existing diet structure and production mode can effectively delay global climate change, protect biodiversity and improve public health, and better ensure food safety and social equity in the context of population growth." Many organizations have jointly signed and implemented the concept recognized by the "Good Food Pledge".
Now, the CBCGDF is working on the “Good Food Standards”. It is expected that more people will join the “healthy diet” advocated by World Food Day through the implementation of group standards.
(Photo credit: CBCGDF)
Original Chinese article:
http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4854/10133.html
By / Xue Tongtong