ABSTRACT
Dietary overconsumption is one of the defining features of modern food systems. These systems are destroying the planet and creating the world’s biggest risk for ill health and premature death: malnutrition in all its forms. The three global challenges of obesity, undernutrition and climate change can be characterised as a synergy of pandemics called “the Global Syndemic”. The prevailing global economic model drives the Global Syndemic by encouraging overconsumption of everything, including unhealthy foods and beverages, beef and dairy products, and fossil fuels that contribute to obesity, undernutrition and climate change. These shared systemic drivers of the Global Syndemic point to shared system-level solutions. Double-duty and triple-duty actions involving the food system have the potential to change the trajectory of all three pandemics simultaneously. Disrupting influences to overcome the current policy inertia for action include incentives for sustainable business models, a global commitment to a Framework Convention on Food Systems, and collective civil society action. Food systems need to be transformed to deliver health, equity, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity.
