How We Can Engage Youth in Food Systems to Improve Diet and Nutrition Outcomes

By Rosie Eldridge, Project Coordinator, and Courtney Meyer, Publications Manager

The quantity and quality of food that children and adolescents eat helps determine their cognitive and physical potential, and they know it. In 2021, UNICEF and Western Sydney University held a series of workshops with adolescents in 18 countries to discuss how to improve food systems and access to safe and nutritious foods. As a participant from Nepal acknowledged, “Food is the energy force of a person and is a fundamental aspect for the human being.” Additionally, a participant from Kenya said, “Food is more than just what we eat, food is what defines us and a major social factor that brings us together.”

The 2.4 billion youth (10–29 years) around the world can influence behaviors and social norms around food production, purchase, and consumption among their peers, families, and even communities. Their influence can help shape the future of food—and their own nutrition and health. But here’s the challenge: We don’t know whether or how youth involvement in food systems affects diet and nutrition outcomes, individually or societally.

Adolescence (10–19 years of age) is a key time to engage youth to improve food systems, as it marks a time of significant physical, developmental, and cognitive change. Although we know that this creates the potential for both setting healthy habits and supporting optimal growth and development, we don’t know how best to accomplish this. USAID Advancing Nutrition’s Adolescent Nutrition Resource Bank compiles tools and insights to help stakeholders learn more about this critical life stage and improve nutrition programs serving this important but often overlooked population.

The Adolescent Nutrition Resource Bank continues to grow over time. One recently added resource is a concept note summarizing what the global nutrition community knows so far about how to engage youth in food systems. Developed by USAID Advancing Nutrition, it helps identify the research and actions necessary to use youth’s power for change to improve nutrition and health.?

How Youth Engage with Food Systems (What We Know—and What We Don’t)?

Food systems encompass all activities between food production and food utilization—from storage, processing, and packaging to trade, distribution, and sales. Following USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security Food Systems Conceptual Framework , this concept note organizes evidence and opportunities by the type of activities conducted: 1) food supply, 2) food environment, and 3) food and water utilization.

Youth can influence food systems as producers of the food supply; as participants in food environments as consumers, vendors, and advertisers; and in how they choose, acquire, store, and prepare the foods they and their households consume.

The pre-market food supply is affected by the availability of natural resources, environmental conditions, and technologies and processes within the food supply chain. We know the most about engaging youth as producers—after all, the global food system is their largest employer—but age-related challenges to accessing knowledge and resources can limit their ability to influence and improve food systems. Facilitating access to productive resources, information, and skill development for youth can help eliminate this barrier and generate income that increases their ability to access a healthy diet.

The food environment—where foods and consumers interact—is shaped by the affordability, accessibility, desirability, and convenience of food, as well as how it is marketed. Youth occupy and are influenced by a variety of food environments—including home, school, and different marketplaces—that influence how they interact with food. While youth have an opportunity to shape these environments, it is currently unclear whether that affects their diet and nutrition outcomes.

Food and water utilization (preparation, preferences, and use) is strongly influenced by social and cultural norms, as well as nutrition-related behaviors. Family and household dynamics influence young people’s dietary habits. But as they mature, youth gain more autonomy and agency, and outside dynamics like friends, marketing, and media (traditional and social) shape their dietary preferences. Deviating from intergenerational food dynamics could have an impact on their diet and nutrition outcomes, but we don’t know the extent to which their voices or needs determine household food decisions.?

How We Can Leverage the Power of Youth

Youth often do not have a say in many of the decisions that affect them. The 2021 Adolescent Nutrition Lancet Series calls for shifting “... from viewing adolescents as passive recipients of interventions to active partners pursuing shared goals.” Here’s how we can target youth to develop more sustainable and nutritious food systems:

• Provide more opportunities for involvement at various points in food systems (e.g., processing) to enable youth to be agents of change for their health and their communities.
• Increase promotion of and access to healthy food options within the food environments youth occupy to expose them to positive influences, and ensure they can exercise agency in shaping these environments.
• Leverage youth propensity for communicating through social media. Highlight the importance of their involvement by encouraging them to take pride in their healthy choices and share positive messaging to promote healthy nutrition-related behaviors.
• Involve youth in participatory decision-making processes , such as the development of research activities and learning agendas. Make a contextually relevant and culturally appropriate plan of action, beginning with formative research to understand the opportunities and barriers.

We urgently need better evidence of effective approaches to engage youth in food systems. Youth understand this responsibility; many of them care deeply about climate change and food justice. During the 2021 UNICEF and Western Sydney University workshop series , an adolescent from Ethiopia said, “We are the future of the country and we want the government to engage us in different aspects of food systems.” Another workshop participant from the Netherlands asked for help to learn more. “Children should be educated more about healthy food, where it comes from, and what the consequences are of producing certain products.” Today’s youth are our future teachers, nutritionists, farmers, and healthcare providers. To support their development, nutrition stakeholders and youth must work together to shape sustainable, nutritious food systems that benefit us all.

Interested in reading more about youth and their role in food systems? We suggest—

• Fix My Food: Children’s Views on Transforming Food Systems
• Feed the Future Project Design Guide for Youth-Inclusive Agriculture and Food Systems: Volume I—Project Design
• Feed the Future Project Design Guide for Youth-Inclusive Agriculture and Food Systems: Volume II—Implementation
• Young People and Agriculture: Strategic Priorities for Impact
• Use of Media to Engage School-Age Children and Adolescents to Improve their Nutrition and Health

Other related resources on the bank include—

• Controls on the Marketing of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children in Thailand: Legislative Options and Regulatory Design
• Unhealthy Digital Food Marketing to Children in the Philippines
• Restrictions on the Marketing of Unhealthy Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children Advocacy Cartoons

Contribute to the Adolescent Nutrition Resource Bank

Do you have a resource you’d like to share with the adolescent nutrition community? If so, please contact us at [email protected].

Avez-vous une ressource que vous voulez partager avec la communauté de la nutrition des adolescents? Veuillez nous contacter à [email protected].

?Tiene algún recurso que le gustaría compartir acerca de la nutrición de los adolescentes? Si es así, envíenoslo a [email protected].

To learn more or search for resources, please visit www.advancingnutrition.org/adolescent.