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Nutrition & Health

By 2050, the world’s population is projected to reach ten billion. Providing a growing world population with safe, sustainable, and nutritious food is a huge challenge for the future – and dairy is part of the solution.

Billions of people around the world rely on dairy for nutrition daily. Dairy products are nutrient dense foods, supplying significant amounts of energy, protein, and micronutrients, including calcium, magnesium, selenium, riboflavin, and vitamins B5 and B12.

World hunger has been on the rise since 2015 and an estimated 821 million people around the globe suffer from hunger. At the same time, obesity and the number of persons overweight continue to increase in all regions of the world.

Highlighting dairy’s contribution to nutrition

IDF supports the global dairy sector in delivering on its aims to promote balanced, holistic diets that support good health, including appropriate consumption of animal protein especially for vulnerable populations that face nutrition deficiencies. 

  • IDF represents the global sector on high profile issues related to nutrition, to ensure the key facts are heard by policy makers and opinion formers. Much of our work focuses on exploring the huge potential of the dairy sector has for tackling malnutrition and creating food security, promoting greater understanding of the nutritional value of dairy and the role it plays in healthy and sustainable diets and better understanding the science which determines the impact of dairy products on nutrition and health.
  • The IDF is passionate about ensuring that the health impact of dairy foods as a whole food and not just individual nutrients is understood by key opinion formers and policy makers. IDF will continue to work with members to raise awareness of this important information, reinforcing the essential role of dairy in sustainable diets.
  • One of our priorities is to ensure that nutrition is at the nexus of all the policies, guidelines, standards prepared and implemented by the UN agencies with a mandate in nutrition (FAO, WHO, IFAD, UNICEF and WFP) with the aim of reshaping food systems. IDF’s focus is to ensure consistency in policies put forward by UN agencies and alignment with the work of standard setting bodies such as Codex, safeguarding the role of dairy in a healthy diet and helping meet SDGs.

As the world population continues to increase, it will become even more critical to provide nutrient rich foods in a way that addresses the health of individuals & sustainability concerns

Related reports & publications

IDF provides a permanent source of authoritative scientific and other information on a whole range of topics relevant to the dairy sector.

Learn more about nutrition & health

The breadth of issues IDF covers in its work is extensive. Find out more about the work we do.

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