In 2009, the Assembly of Health Ministers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also adopted a resolution for action in nutrition, which emphasizes the urgent need to develop capacity for nutrition in West Africa.
The symposium is an integral component of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016-2025, which seeks to increase investments and actions to improve people's diets and nutrition.
The outcome was that the world's first plan of Action for nutrition does not provide any guidelines for sugar consumption.
WHO|United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition: http://www.who.int/nutrition/decade-of-action/en/.
The UN has named this coming period the "Decade of Action on Nutrition".
Global initiatives like the EAT Foundation, leading reports such as the Global Nutrition Report and the State of Food Insecurity, massive efforts and even a United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition.
Evidence-based, impact-driven policy and financial commitments should be a feature of the October moment, and Ministers should show up ready to take action on nutrition and the full package of early childhood development interventions.
The change to a more holistic conceptualisation of malnutrition may seem subtle, but as we embark on a United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition, the potential public health benefits could well prove transformational.
If Ecuador is serious about putting "the population's right to health" first, as it recently declared in making "ambitious commitments to the United Nations Decadee of Action on Nutrition," it should start by improving school food.
As the United Nations declares a Decade of Action on Nutrition, as our global population moves from 50% urban to 70% urban over the coming decades, as food systems and diets become the leading risks to our planet's health, and the health of all mankind, there has never been a better -- or more crucial -- time to act.
