Opinion: Protecting nature's perfect food system

Building healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems is a critical challenge for the global development community. In this final decade for achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, transforming food systems will also be an important part of ending malnutrition in all its forms. But discussions about harnessing food systems to improve nutrition too often ignore the nutrition babies receive from nature’s perfect food system: breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding provides infants with an elegant, efficient, and environmentally sustainable source of nutrition, with powerful health benefits for both mom and baby. Breastmilk is nature’s perfect first food, tailor-made for babies and able to provide all the vitamins, proteins, and fats they need for about the first six months.

Breastmilk also provides powerful antibodies that fight off illness and build immunity, as well as probiotics that aid a baby’s digestion and help build a healthy digestive tract. Amazingly, the composition of mother’s milk changes and adapts as baby grows.

Breastfeeding takes a community

Food systems involve complex moving pieces that work together to bring food from production to our plates. A seed cannot feed a family without countless inputs and interactions, all bolstered by supportive environments, policies, and norms — and the same is true for breastmilk.

Inputs into this food system begin even before pregnancy, as a woman’s knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about breastfeeding are shaped and her body builds up stores of nutrients that will later appear in her breastmilk. Throughout lactation, women manage both the quantity and quality of their breastmilk production, navigating through environmental barriers and facilitators along the way.

Finally, providing breastmilk to an infant requires time, energy, capacity, and skill — as well as support from everyone: families, policymakers, health facilities, communities, and employers. Some women choose not to or are unable to breastfeed, but specific interventions — such as countries adopting and monitoring the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and relevant World Health Assembly resolutions — are proven to support women who breastfeed, tackling the underlying barriers and providing the support they need to succeed.

Many mothers would like to breastfeed — but only 44% of infants under 6 months of age are exclusively breastfed. Why? Women in every corner of the world face too many barriers to meet their breastfeeding goals. From social and cultural factors to hospital and health care practices and policies, to inadequate paid leave policies and legislation, to aggressive marketing of breast milk substitutes, to a lack of knowledge and adequate skilled support — somewhere along the way, nature’s perfect food system has broken down.

Investing in breastfeeding yields results

We can no longer overlook the fact that the breastfeeding system is under threat. As global actors are devoted to transforming food systems to end malnutrition and feed our ever-expanding population into the future, greater investment is needed to tackle obstacles to breastfeeding.

Scaling up breastfeeding interventions is a proven, cost-effective way to improve the health and well-being of moms and babies, with every $1 invested yielding approximately $35 in economic gains.

Countries that fail to invest in breastfeeding lose billions of dollars to lower economic productivity and higher health costs. Alive & Thrive’s Cost of Not Breastfeeding tool demonstrates just how important breastfeeding is to a healthy society. According to the tool, nearly 600,000 children and nearly 100,000 women die each year across the globe due to inadequate breastfeeding; together, these preventable deaths and the cognitive losses and burdens on our health system that stem from low breastfeeding rates result in global economic losses of more than $340 billion annually.

Breastfeeding and COVID-19

Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts are underway to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding. Programs around the world are finding creative solutions to ensure women are able to continue breastfeeding their children safely without disruption. For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Suaahara project in Nepal adapted to the pandemic by providing phone counseling on breastfeeding to more than 300,000 mothers as well as socially-distanced breastfeeding counseling. But greater efforts will be needed to implement best-practices for supporting breastfeeding in our virtual world.

This year, as the global development community builds back from the pandemic and looks to the future of food systems, we must prioritize protecting nature’s perfect food system. The Nutrition for Growth Year of Action offers multiple opportunities for stakeholders to announce pledges, commitments, and solutions to tackle malnutrition leading up to the N4G Summit in December. Now is the time for greater action to ensure equitable access to breastfeeding across the globe. The health of mothers, children, and their societies depends on it.

Visit the Future of Food Systems series for more coverage on food and nutrition — and importantly, how we can make food fair and healthy for all. You can join the conversation using the hashtag #FoodSystems.