Post by Arla Foods

Food literacy can help drive food systems change 🍽️ That was one of the strongest messages from a roundtable we convened in partnership with Danish Embassy and Arla Foundation during London Climate Action Week. The discussion brought together voices from across food, health, policy, science and civil society to explore how stronger food literacy can help reconnect people with the food systems and improve choices and ultimately create positive change. This conversation sits at the heart of our health strategy ambition: To make a lasting positive impact on people’s health by enabling good food choices. We believe that requires more than individual action. It requires food systems change. Today, food choices are shaped by many forces: affordability, habits, convenience, culture, policy, marketing, trust, and access to credible information. Too often, these forces work in fragmented ways, leaving people navigate complex and sometimes conflicting messages about what is healthy, sustainable, and affordable. Food literacy can help change this. Not as a way to place more responsibility on individuals, but as an enabler of better decisions across the system, from governments and retailers to educators, businesses, communities and consumers. The roundtable highlighted how complex this issue is and that there was no silver bullet to connect people and decision makers with the knowledge and experience needed to deliver better health, climate, nature and resilience outcomes. For Arla, this is why partnership and coalition-building matter. As a farmer-owned cooperative, we have a responsibility to contribute our knowledge of dairy, nutrition and food production while working with others to create the conditions that make good food choices easier, more trusted and more accessible. So, what happens next? Participants were clear that we needed to build a shared language, bring more voices into the conversation, and make food literacy impossible to ignore. Because healthier people and more sustainable food systems depend on better understanding and on collective action. We are committed to build the conversation, so watch this space… #FoodLiteracy #Health #FoodSystems #Nutrition #Sustainability #Partnerships #ArlaFoods