In today’s world, 149 million children under five are stunted, 45 million suffer wasting and 39 million are overweight. Nutrition for these children is critically associated with their survival, future health, development and their opportunities in life. Yet, with 1.9 billion adults overweight and 462 million underweight— and hunger on the rise — it is clear that malnutrition remains an overwhelming, vicious and intergenerational challenge.

Nutrition has many niches of study and, as such, we have an incomplete understanding of the complexity of the nutrition landscape. Some view nutrition as a physiological state, some as a human right. Nutrition — and its problems — are too often viewed as a direct function of supply of nutrients and choice of dietary patterns; malnutrition as an imbalance of intake and requirements; with responsibility for nutrition falling on the individual rather than a system. Nutrition can be marginalized from high-level dialogues on sustainability and food security when the focus is placed on quantity, rather than quality, of food supply.

In this set of articles, we find that the burdens of malnutrition are, in reality, the complex fall-out from failing food, health and political systems. The extent of these failings has been drawn into sharp focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, East African locust outbreaks and violent conflict the world over. The good news is that food and nutrition science is enjoying a period of remarkable innovation in technology and financing – challenged-focused and creative, science is delivering solutions, on alternative proteins, circular bio-economy, precision nutrition and more. As promising as this is, high-level dialogues on shared vision and operational trust between food systems actors — those who can make a real difference to the burdens of malnutrition — are in their infancy. Nutrition needs those dialogues.

And so, Nutrition for Growth in Tokyo offers a major opportunity for change. It falls mid-way in the Decade of Nutrition, within a global pandemic, and in quick succession from the UN Food Systems Summit and COP 26. The articles here take stock of the food, health and political systems that are driving malnutrition. With innovations in technology and finance offering creative and challenged-focused solutions, we ask if those with power in global food systems are hungry for change?

Anne Mullen

Chief Editor, Nature Food