Strategic Initiative for a Healthy and Sustainable
Food Environment（HSFE）

Overview

With the challenge of further extending healthy life expectancy in Japan, there is an urgent need to promote a food environment that can nudge people to practice healthy eating, regardless of their health consciousness. In promoting such improvements in the food environment, the focus should be not only on health and nutrition, but also the sustainability of the food environment. From February to June 2021, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) convened a committee to discuss how multisector collaboration between industry, academia and government can effectively promote a healthy and sustainable food environment, in collaboration with the relevant ministries and agencies.

Based on the discussions in this committee, the MHLW launched Initiative for a Healthy and Sustainable Food Environment(HSFE)was established.

NEWS

March 29, 2024
Report on the Initiative’s Activities(2023) A4size・A3size ／ Introduction to the Initiative(2023)

March 27, 2023
Introduction to the Initiative(2022)

March 9, 2022
Initiative for a Healthy and Sustainable Food Environment(HSFE)was established.

January 11, 2022
The website has been released.

Background

Facing the upcoming “100-years of life era”, ensuring citizens stay healthy throughout their lives is a major challenge. The following nutritional issues need to be addressed, as they can impact all generations and furthermore potentially affect individuals throughout their lives:

Excess salt intake
Thinness in young women
Nutritional disparities associated with socioeconomic status

In addition, it is also important to promote a food environment in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. In this regards, not only the nutritional aspects, but also the environmental aspects are essential to enhance the sustainability of the food environment.

Goal of this Initiative

This initiative considers nutritional and environmental issues, such as excessive salt intake, thinness among young women, and nutritional disparity due to economic disparity, as serious social issues, and develops a food environment in which everyone can be naturally healthy through cooperation and collaboration among industry*, academia, and government. We aim to extend the healthy life expectancy of people in Japan and around the world, and to realize a vibrant and sustainable.

*The term "industry" encompasses a wide variety of industries, including food manufacturers, food distributors, and media.

Potential Participants

Food manufacturers, food distributors, and media.
*Must be able to work on solving nutritional issues in Japan.
*Must be able to set SMART-style action goals.

Activities of this Initiative

Formulation of goals of this initiative:
- Based on the Japanese government's commitment at the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 to create a better food environment, identify effective measures that should be taken in collaboration with industry, government, and academia, and formulate an action roadmap.
Promotion of research and data curation that contribute to creation of a food environment:
- Study of nutritional profiling systems adapted to the dietary habits and nutritional challenges in Japan and Asia
- Multi-center experiment of effectiveness of various methods such as sales methods for appealing to consumers, etc.
Support for the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Action) process regarding the SMART-type action goals of each participant:
- Set up opportunities for information exchange among industry, government, and academia.
- Information and opinion exchange across the industries (creation of opportunities for collaboration) and with the national government (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, etc.) and research institutes (including sharing of the global trend topics in the areas of nutrition and the environment that can be used as reference in considering business risks of participants)　etc.
- Creating opportunities to exchange information with financial institutions.
- Information and opinion exchange with institutional investors and related advisors, etc.
Dissemination of information to domestic and overseas markets.

Contact Information

For more information, contact the Secretariat of the Strategic Initiative for a Healthy and Sustainable Food Environment（HSFE） at the NTTDATA Institute of Management Consulting (Contractor).
E-mail：food_environment@nttdata-strategy.com
Reception hours：10:00-17:00 weekdays