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Safe and affordable healthy diets are key to achieving food and nutrition security. The role of functioning food systems is critical to enable the availability of, and everyone’s structural, economic, and physical access to safe and affordable healthy diets. This also involves empowering key actors within the food systems and promoting its overall resilience and sustainability . However, there are indications and evidence suggesting the failure of the food systems to deliver safe, and affordable healthy diets for all. The Philippines has the highest stunting prevalence among the ASEAN countries, and stunting remains to be of very high public health significance in the country . Prior to the pandemic, the rate of stunting was recorded at 28.8%, while underweight and wasting rates were 19% and 5.8%, respectively . Conversely, overweight and obesity have been on the rise among adolescents and adults. During the period of the Covid 19 pandemic, one of the major shocks in the food systems, household food insecurity increased by as much as 62% and will most likely worsen the nutrition situation of the country.

The Philippines has informal and expanding food system typology whose population diet consists largely of rice, fish and some seasonal fruits and vegetables, and an increasing demand for animal-sourced foods, processed and convenience foods. Whether our current diet is safe, affordable, and healthy, is subject to further scrutiny—even the definition of what is safe, affordable, and healthy, and whether every household can have it all, is open for debate and discussions. “Our food systems in crisis” is a collective call based on current events, literature and lived experience, of whether our current food systems can deliver safe, and affordable healthy diets for all. These topics are among the key offerings of the 2023 PSND Annual Convention.

We invite NDs and partners in various capacities—public health and community nutrition, clinical dietetics and medical nutrition, education, science and technology, business and industry, agri-food systems, and policy and governance—to take part in the current debate and discussions. Join us in our urgent call for multi-sectoral response towards safe, and affordable healthy diets for all Filipinos.