ABSTRACT
The health impacts of food systems are extensive and costly. This chapter outlines how industrial food system practices impact human health through five different channels: occupational hazards; environmental contamination; contaminated, unsafe and altered foods; unhealthy dietary patterns; and food insecurity. The chapter argues that these impacts reflect severe market failures. The policy responses required to correct these market failures are held back by a number of “evidence failures”: our ability to see the full picture of food system impacts is obscured by blind spots in the evidence base, as well as the differential power of actors to shape narratives and understandings about food systems. We identify five leverage points to overcome these challenges and build healthier food systems: i) promoting food systems thinking; ii) reasserting scientific integrity and research as a public good; iii) bringing the alternatives to light; iv) adopting the precautionary principle; and v) building integrated food policies under participatory governance.
