Places to Intervene to Make Complex Food Systems More Healthy, Green, Fair, and Affordable

Abstract

A Food Systems and Public Health conference was convened in April 2009 to consider research supporting food systems that are healthy, green, fair, and affordable. We used a complex systems framework to examine the contents of background material provided to conference participants. Application of our intervention-level framework (paradigm, goals, system structure, feedback and delays, structural elements) enabled comparison of the conference themes of healthy, green, fair, and affordable. At the level of system structure suggested actions to achieve these goals are fairly compatible, including broad public discussion and implementation of policies and programs that support sustainable food production and distribution. At the level of paradigm and goals, the challenge of making healthy and green food affordable becomes apparent as some actions may be in conflict. Systems thinking can provide insight into the challenges and opportunities to act to make the food supply more healthy, green, fair, and affordable.

Formulating policy activities to promote healthy and sustainable diets

“…The application of food systems thinking to strategically plan, develop and evaluate food and nutrition policy was first proposed by Heywood and Lund-Adams (32) , who articulated the concept and provided a simple framework consisting of four interlinked subcomponents. Since then, food systems thinking has been advocated for policy action by many researchers (33)(34)(35)(36) , including those who have explicitly recommended using it to connect environment and PHN problems (30,31,(37)(38)(39) .…”

“…As Malhi et al observe, 'When tackling a complex problem, the tendency is to oversimplify the problem and the causal linkages or pathways that give rise to outcomes of interest. But for systems where variables have many inputs and outputs, and multiple interacting components create both balancing and reinforcing feedback loops, the outcomes of interest emerge from the system as a whole' (38) . The external interactions of the framework highlight that policy to change the food system can have flow-on effects to the ecological, political, economic and social systems and vice versa.…”

An integrated approach to identifying and characterising resilient urban food systems to promote population health in a changing climate

“…The lack of whole-of-systems perspectives in current food research can partly be attributed to the complexity of food systems (11) . This complexity in food systems is evident both horizontally, across sectors in the supply chain from production (producers and manufacturers) to distribution (retailers and food services) to consumption (consumers), and vertically, as these systems work across local, regional, national and global scales.…”

A Complex Systems Approach to Perceptions of Obesity in Service Users, Health Care Practitioners and Policy Makers

“…Meadows described her list of places to intervene as a work in progress and an invitation to think more broadly about systems change and solving complex problems (21). The power and potential of this framework inspired the Finegood lab to create a condensed version called the Intervention Level Framework (ILF) (29). The ILF was developed with the intention of applying it to obesity to provide insight into the various changes needed to effectively reverse the obesity epidemic (10).…”