Food systems for healthier diets (KB-22-003-003)

Vegetable consumption is a commonly recommended element in a balanced diet. To maintain or raise vegetable consumption is particularly challenging under the bundle of factors commonly referred to as the ‘nutrition transition’.

Nigeria, with its large and quickly expanding urban population with rapidly accumulating wealth and undergoing changes in food habits, will face new, multiple and different challenges regarding food security and food systems, health burdens and non-communicable diseases (NDS). While the nutrition transition is still in an early stage in Nigeria, in urban areas in Nigeria an increase in the incidence of obesity and related NCDs is already observed.

We present a research agenda and empirical strategy around these knowledge gaps for the case of Nigeria, and explain why and how a food system approach is required to respond to these challenges. The choice determinants of vegetable consumption in an urban African population are poorly understood from a system perspective. Reliable data on food choices and food choice motives are gathered in 2016 by socioeconomic class among the urban population (with exception of the poorest), along with indicative data on vegetable intake.   Leverage points for bringing diets in line with WHO recommendations and for moving towards more sustainable food systems can be identified in (1) product and process innovation, (2) distribution and trade and (3) information and price policies for consumers in line with an adjusted rules and incentive frameworks for agriculture and food value chains.