Reconstruct food systems to be healthy, sustainable, and equitable

The convenience culture is undermining the benefits of Nordic diets such as boiled potatoes, root vegetables, and wholemeal breads. There is a shift toward diets higher in animal-sourced foods, vegetable oils high in saturated fat content, refined carbohydrates, and caloric sweetener. The reasons for ultra-processed foods gaining momentum are the industrialisation of food systems, technological change, and globalisation, including growth in the market and political activities of transnational food corporations as well as inadequate policies to protect nutrition in these new contexts.  

Understanding the drivers and dynamics of ultra-processed foods consumption is therefore essential, given the evidence that these foods are linked with adverse health outcomes.

The role of CAP in the structural alignment of agricultural production and public health

The EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has shaped the broader food environment in which European consumers make dietary choices. Through subsidies favouring the production of cereals, dairy, and livestock, the early CAP contributed to a food system that prioritised calorie-dense and nutrient-poor products over fruits, vegetables, and legumes. This influenced the availability, affordability, and acceptability of different food categories, often to the detriment of healthy dietary patterns. The unhealthy dietary patterns are linked to a higher incidence of non-communicable diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.  

While CAP is only partly responsible, it has played a role in the structural alignment of agricultural production and public health. However, equally or more important is the influence of food processing, retail, and consumption practices, which determine how agricultural outputs are integrated into diets.

Corporate food regime and the proliferation of ultra-processed foods

The corporate food regime has driven the proliferation of ultra-processed foods and affected consumers’ nutritional and health outcomes through engineered nutritional profiles of foods (cheap, long-lasting, highly palatable & profitable), aggressive marketing, and structural manipulation of research and policy environments. The rise of cheap calories via ultra-processed foods is both a symptom and a cause of modern food system failures. While they have reduced food costs and increased convenience, they have done so at the expense of public health, nutrition equity, and sustainability. Addressing this issue requires systemic changes — not just individual dietary choices.  

Systemic changes to promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems

Systemic changes must be multi-level, targeting the economic, regulatory, agricultural, and social systems that shape our food environment to address the widespread presence of cheap and low-nutrient calories via the dominance of ultra-processed foods. Addressing the systemic dominance of unhealthy ultra-processed foods requires coordinated, long-term policy and cultural change, including rethinking what we grow, how we process and distribute food, and how people access and understand food as well as who controls the food system. Eventually, we need to rebuild food systems that are nutritious, equitable, and sustainable — centred not only on profits and economic growth, but also on people and the planet.

We can feed the world's population today and in the future with healthy and nutritious food, while regenerating the planet’s ecosystems by transforming how we produce, consume, and value food. Global aging and dependency ratios will rise faster due to faster declines in total fertility rates, with major consequences for economies and social systems. The vital question is how we redesign our systems — our policies, our markets, our mindsets — to support not only the achievement of public health goals and sustainable food systems, but also the reduction of health and food system inequities.