Bellagio Report on Healthy Agriculture, Healthy Nutrition, Healthy People1

The meeting on Healthy Agriculture, Healthy Nutrition, Healthy People took place at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, 30 October–1 November 2012. The meeting was sponsored by The Center for Genetics Nutrition and Health, The Rockefeller Foundation, Green Templeton College of the University of Oxford, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Nutrilite Health Institute, Health Studies Collegium, Hellenic American University, and Hellenic American Union. The focus of the meeting was the Implementation of the Action Plan on Healthy Agriculture, Healthy Nutrition, Healthy People, which had been developed at the meeting on Healthy Agriculture, Healthy Nutrition, Healthy People, held at Ancient Olympia, Greece 5–8 October 2010. The meeting in Bellagio was sciencebased but policy-oriented. There were 19 participants from 9 countries, including distinguished physicians, nutritionists, agriculturists, economists, policy experts, lawyers, representatives of industry and representatives from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This international constellation of expertise provided a superb opportunity for in depth discussions of the most current scientific evidence on sustainable agriculture and nutrition security for health. The group’s broad, overall concerns were with human health, particularly child health, with societal economics, and with planetary ecosystems. Our The Bellagio Report on Healthy Agriculture, Healthy Nutrition, Healthy People is the result of the meeting held at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Lake Como, Italy 30 October-1 November, 2012. The meeting was science-based but policy-oriented. The role and amount of healthy and unhealthy fats, with attention to the relative content of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, sugar, and particularly fructose in foods that may underlie the epidemics of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide were extensively discussed. The report concludes that sugar consumption, especially in the form of high energy fructose in soft drinks, poses a major and insidious health threat, especially in children, and most diets, although with regional differences, are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids and too high in omega-6 fatty acids. Gene-nutrient interactions in growth and development and in disease prevention are fundamental to health, therefore regional Centers on Genetics, Nutrition and Fitness for Health should be established worldwide. Heads of state and government must elevate, as a matter of urgency, nutrition as a national priority, that access to a healthy diet should be considered a human right and that the lead responsibility for nutrition should be placed in Ministries of Health rather than agriculture so that the health requirements drive agricultural priorities, not vice versa. Nutritional security should be given the same priority as food security.