Nearly three billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet. Current food systems fail to provide nutritious, affordable, and accessible food, leading to all forms of malnutrition—from undernutrition to obesity. The CGIAR Better Diets and Nutrition Science Program (BDN) is designed to reshape food systems, ensuring that healthy diets are available and desirable for all, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). 
 
This program applies systems thinking to tackle major challenges such as affordability, accessibility, and desirability of sustainable healthy diets (SHD). By collaborating with market actors, policymakers, and communities, the program aims to make nutritious food more available while fostering social equity and environmental sustainability. 
 
What will BDN do? 
• The Program aims to identify, co-design, and test food system solutions that tackle major constraints to delivering SHD and nutrition impacts.  
• The Program will provide evidence and solutions to strengthen knowledge, coordination, governance, leadership, and investments to make SHD desirable, affordable, accessible, and available, while increasing people’s agency to attain them. 
 
How Will the Program Achieve Its Goals? 
The program is designed to drive impact through three key pathways: innovation, capacity-building, and policy change.  
• Innovation Pathway: The program will develop and test targeted consumer-focused solutions to overcome major barriers to accessing SHDs.  
• Capacity Pathway: The program will strengthen skills, leadership, and institutional capabilities of local and regional stakeholders to support the widespread adoption of nutrition-sensitive food system solutions. 
• Policy Pathway: Research and direct engagement with governments and other decision-makers will lead to evidence-based policies and programs that address systemic challenges in food systems. 

Objectives of the BDN session:

· Introducing the content of the BDN Science Program to both internal and external stakeholders (especially people who might not have been involved in the writing teams or proposal developments)

· Capturing useful input and insight that will help shape the portfolio further adding some granularity to the implementation plans

· Highlighting the link with other programs and accelerators

· Identifying the comparative advantage and ROI of CGIAR science to provide a clear idea where investment is needed