With FANTA support, the 26th Annual Martin J. Forman Memorial Lecture took place at the International Food Policy Research Institute on December 19, 2016, featuring speaker Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. The lecture explored how non-business and business actors engage more productively within the mixed-economy food system to form healthy rather than toxic alliances in the fight against malnutrition.

To many, business and nutrition are like oil and water—never to mix. In reality, the two mix all the time, aided by “emulsifiers" that are not always positive for nutrition. Given the enormous global toll taken on lives, health, and economies by poor diets, food systems (i.e., businesses) have to be incentivized towards supplying safer, nutritious food at affordable prices. Simultaneously, consumers need more incentives to make better diet choices to drive those changes.

During the lecture, speakers delved into how a more “virtuous emulsification” of oil and water can be encouraged.