Anna W. Herforth

My work has addressed foundational questions:

Can people afford healthy diets?

Are people eating healthy diets?

Previously, lack of data rendered these issues largely invisible to policymakers.

To address these questions, I developed reliable indicators and diet measurement tools that have been adopted globally to inform policy and practice:

(1) The Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet indicators reveal that nearly 1 in 3 people cannot afford a healthy diet. These statistics are now reported annually by the United Nations since 2020.

(2) Our first ever global survey on what people eat, representing 85% of the world population, led to adoption of an indicator of healthy diets in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2025.

This new information helps focus international attention and action on affordability and consumption of adequate nourishing food.

Currently, I work with UN agencies to support countries to monitor these indicators and use them in policymaking.

As a Visiting Associate Professor at Wageningen University & Research, I am creating a World Food Map to highlight locally available, accepted, and underutilized foods in each country that could be scaled up to improve access and consumption of healthy diets.

This collaborative work responds to the consensus voiced by the Ag2Nut Community of Practice that I co-founded in 2010, that diversification of food production and measurement aligned with dietary needs are Key Recommendations for Improving Nutrition through Agriculture and Food Systems.