Why is creating a healthy food environment so crucial to making improvements in diet-related NCDs?

Abstract

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes are the leading cause of death worldwide. To decrease the global burden of NCDs and strengthen national efforts to combat NCDs, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs 2013-2020. This plan provides established procedures and several policy options for member countries and other partners. Although many countries recognize that prevention of NCDs is an important health priority, their governments currently face a challenge: How do they adopt a multi-sectoral approach to promoting a healthy lifestyle among their populations? For this, all sectors of the food system (primary production, food processing, distribution, marketing, retail, catering, and food service) need to coordinate with each other for future governance. Since regulatory policy intervention areas for diet-related NCDs are widespread throughout the global food system, for future perspectives, comprehensive and coordinated approaches are needed for policy development and implementation across all levels of governments and food sectors in order to ensure sustainable policy action.