A nutrition-sensitive food system ensures equitable access to diverse, safe, and healthy foods that are both affordable and sustainably produced. Yet today’s food systems are failing to deliver on these key goals for billions around the world. They are also major drivers of climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and growing socioeconomic inequalities.

Thus, the systems designed to feed people are inadvertently making many sicker, costing trillions, and damaging our planet. Despite dedicated global efforts, the burdens of malnutrition have continued to grow. At least 2 billion people lack essential micronutrients, while projections suggest that by 2030, one in five children could still be stunted (low height for age). At the same time, nearly 3 billion adults may be overweight or obese. The impact of diet-related non-communicable diseases is also immense.

These are not just health crises but are economic ones. The world loses an estimated $21 trillion in human capital productivity due to inadequate nutrition, while the social and economic costs of overweight and obesity could reach $20 trillion over the next decade.

Tackling these challenges, reversing current trends, and making progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—particularly SDG2, ending hunger and achieving food security and improved nutrition—requires action across food systems. That, in turn, requires research on the best approaches to transforming food systems to address the current food security and nutrition crisis.

Research priorities and recommendations for supporting nutrition-sensitive food systems transformation

As part of a concerted global effort following the March 2025 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris, IFPRI, CGIAR, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) have published a new policy brief on nutrition-sensitive food systems in response to the dialogue at the UN Food Systems Summit +4 (UNFSS+4) Stocktake July 27-29 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

To fill critical knowledge gaps, the policy brief outlines 11 research priorities for achieving sustainable healthy diets. Summarized below, these priorities align with the consumer-focused food systems for healthy diets framework from IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report (Figure 1) to illustrate how research across different parts of the food system can support more integrated and action with lasting impacts.

Policy and governance

The foundation of this framework is policy and governance: The rules, institutions, and coordination mechanisms that guide how different sectors work together to promote sustainable food systems and healthy diets.Research is needed to designmulti-level governance and coordination mechanisms that link key sectors-–such as agriculture, health, education, and social protection––to improve nutrition outcomes. Additionally, enhancing true cost accounting can equip decision-makers with a fuller picture of the environmental, health, and social costs embedded in current food systems. This evidence can inform policies and investments that better reflect real-world tradeoffs and promote equitable, sustainable outcomes.

System-wide drivers of change

Building on this foundation, several research priorities focus on the drivers of change that shape how food systems function and, ultimately, what ends up on people’s plates. These include:

• Biophysical and environmental drivers: There is a need to quantify how climate change and environmental degradation impact food quality, safety, and diversity, enabling governance that strengthens resilience and protects nutritional outcomes.
• Economic and market drivers: Research on the role of international trade in food systems is critical, as trade affects the availability, affordability, and sustainability of food, influencing dietary patterns and national food policies.
• Social, cultural, and demographic drivers: Understanding the political and socioeconomic drivers that shape diets, such as income, cultural norms, and social dynamics, can inform more effective interventions.

Food system domains

IFPRI’s adapted framework identifies three core building blocks that shape diets: food supply chains, the systems and actors behind producing, processing, distribution, and marketing; food environments, the physical, economic, policy, and sociocultural contexts that influence food access and choices; and consumer behavior, how people acquire, prepare, and consume food. Several research priorities emerge within these domains.

• Food supply chains: On the supply side, more research is needed on sustainable and nutrition-sensitive agriculture to ensure nutritious, diversified, and safe foods while reducing the environmental impacts of farming and ensuring equitable livelihoods. Understanding the role of local food systems and short supply chains is also key to assessing their impact on diets, affordability, and sustainability, especially in resource-constrained settings. In addition, research is needed to examine how value chains and markets can balance the trade-offs in food processing––preserving nutrients and safety without compromising affordability or health.
• Food environments: Research should examine the role of food environments vs. individual responsibility in achieving sustainable healthy diets, including how factors like availability, affordability, and marketing affect decision-making.
• Consumer behavior: On the consumer side, it is important to understand the characteristics and behaviors that shape food choices, such as income, preferences, knowledge, culture, and habits.

Beyond these domains lie broader environmental, economic, and social consequences of food systems. Research on equity in access to sustainable healthy diets can help us understand how price volatility, subsidies, and taxes affect different income groups, and how indigenous knowledge can be integrated into dietary guidelines.

Nutrition-sensitive innovations

Finally, research should focus on enhancing nutrition-sensitive innovations.These include improving food production through strategies such as biofortification, as well as shaping consumer demand through interventions including school meal programs and social media campaigns. Together, these innovations can improve diet quality and sustainability by addressing both supply- and demand-side drivers of food choices.

IFPRI’s forward-looking research agenda

Supporting this agenda and UNFSS+4 priorities, IFPRI’s research aims to generate actionable insights and promote cross-sectoral collaboration.

Our work includes advancing multisectoral action by deepening understanding of how various sectors and systems—agriculture, social protection, education, and health systems, to name a few—work together to improve diets and nutrition, particularly for women, children, and adolescents. We also explore how markets and value chains—from improved infrastructure and price information to reforms encouraging supermarkets to source healthier, local foods—influence access to nutritious diets. Our gender research provides evidence on how empowering women and girls improves food security and nutrition outcomes.

We also contribute to the growing evidence base on food systems governance, financing, and policy coherence—core enablers for sustained nutrition progress––by examining how global and national policy processes in nutrition shape decision-making, coordination, and accountability, and how countries scale up action through evidence use, market reforms, and innovation investment.

Our forward-looking work on food systems is grounded in the need to address complex, interconnected challenges such as climate change, conflict, inequality, and food insecurity. By applying a food systems approach, IFPRI supports evidence-based policymaking that considers trade-offs across outcomes including nutrition, livelihoods, gender equity, and environmental sustainability. Current priorities include regional consultations to co-develop agendas with national partners and a new strategy to advance future-focused research on governance, resilience, and equitable food systems transformation through Global South partnerships.

Together, IFPRI’s research approach and the priority actions outlined in this brief form a clear, action-oriented research agenda aligned with global goals—positioning nutrition as a central pillar of food systems transformation.

High time to fund research and innovation for nutrition-sensitive food systems

This is a crucial window of opportunity to act. With nutrition aid facing global cutbacks, the March N4G Summit secured pledges of close to $28 billion in nutrition funding to achieve the SDGs, focused on the SDG2 target of ending malnutrition.Moving forward from UNFSS+4, this is an opportunity to reshape funding priorities for research and innovation that can effectively build more nutrition-sensitive food systems.

Inge Brouwer is a Senior Research Fellow with IFPRI’s Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH) Unit; Deanna Olney is NDH Director; Purnima Menon is IFPRI’s Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy and Acting Senior Director, Transformation Strategy; Julie Ghostlaw is a Country Program Manager with IFPRI’s Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. Opinions are the authors’.

This post draws on the policy brief, “Unlocking Investment for Nutrition-Sensitive Food Systems Research: Turning N4G Commitments into UNFSS+4 Actions.” Read it here.