Global Nutrition Report (annual)

The Global Nutrition Report is an annually updated, web-based, data-led assessment of progress towards and challenges in ending global malnutrition.

The Global Nutrition Report has an Independent Expert Panel that is responsible for the report’s data analysis and conclusions and accountable for its quality and independence. It is produced annually by a stakeholder group consisting of government, donor organizations, civil society, multilateral organizations and business sector representatives.  Members of this panel represent “wide-ranging expertise from across the nutrition community” and are clearly identified on the website.

Country, region and global level data are available. Country-level nutrition profiles and data as well as region-specific resources to help dietitians advocate for better nutrition outcomes through changes in policy and practice are available.

Food Systems Academy (website)

This website is an openly available, educational site. The lectures are recorded with leading thinkers in food systems. They are transparent about from where the ideas originate, and funding: it received initial funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. All materials are available in English only. The main content was added prior to 2016, but new content continues to be added.

Sustainability Courses

In this section we recommend existing courses that help you deepen your knowledge about sustainable food systems (SFS). Some course availability may change over time. We have provided the main page link as well so you can browse topics.

Short Tutorials and Courses (~hours to days)


→ Food EDU

Food EDU online courses and trainings are available on the American Heart Association’s Professional Education Hub. Food EDU is facilitated by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT as co-secretariats of the Periodic Table of Food Initiative.

In addition to courses, the Food EDU page under the Periodic Table of Food Initiative provides an open-access educational platform empowering leaders across the globe to advance human and planetary health. Through online courses, webinars, a networking hub and the Good Food Fellows program, Food EDU provides educational and professional development opportunities for scientists, policymakers, and food and health practitioners worldwide. Food EDU is building the capacity of scientific communities, and bridging gaps between research innovation and educational opportunities worldwide.


→ FAO e-learning Academy

Nutrition and Food Systems: Pathways to Sustainable and Healthy Diets (free) – This is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that was delivered in two editions between September 2021 and June 2022 in English and French. The overall objective of this course was to apply a systems-thinking approach to issues of food security and nutrition, thus contributing to a transformation of food systems towards more sustainable, equitable and healthy diets. This MOOC is made available in order to share the content and associated resources that were specifically developed for it by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Agreenium (Institut Agro Montpellier et Cirad), and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Université Virtuelle Environnement et Développement Durable (UVED).

Sustainable Food Systems: There are 23 courses available on the FAO e-learning Academy under the theme of Sustainable Food Systems:

  1. Tropical Agriculture Platform
  2. Course 3: Gender-Responsive budgeting for agriculture and climate policies
  3. Course 2: Building equitable and inclusive agrifood systems
  4. Course 1: Addressing gender equality in climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture
  5. Introduction: Achieving gender equality in climate change and agrifood systems
  6. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Field experts
  7. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Managers
  8. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Introduction
  9. Social analysis for inclusive agrifood investments – Practitioners
  10. Agrifood system pathways to healthy diets: A stepwise approach
  11. Transforming dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral systems
  12. Sustainable food systems: Concept and framework
  13. Sustainable food systems: Operationalizing the approach
  14. Sustainable food systems: An introduction
  15. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Reform
  16. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Analysis
  17. Developing gender-sensitive value chains
  18. Sustainable Food Value Chains for Nutrition
  19. SDG Indicator 2.4.1 – Sustainable Agriculture
  20. SDG Indicators 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 – Labour productivity and income of small-scale food producersntals
  21. Creating an enabling environment for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems – Fundamentals
  22. Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems
  23. Building a common vision for sustainable food and agriculture

→ Sustainable Diets: Fundamentals for Human and Planetary Health (paid)

Sustainable Diets: Fundamentals for Human and Planetary Health is a short course by MyNutriWeb that addresses healthy food and nutrition for all while averting dangerous climate change and restoring the balance of the natural world. The course brings together leading experts across every aspect of sustainable diets, integrating planetary and nutrition science, together with behaviour change tactics and specific considerations such as low-income groups, athletes, children and the older population. This course can help professionals to develop the confidence and knowledge necessary to incorporate sustainability into their practice.


→ Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet (free)

Learn to achieve a HEALTHY PLATE and a HEALTHY PLANET and help your clients to do the same. Created by Gaples Institute & Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Nutrition. This 10-minute interactive learning experience will guide you toward simple dietary shifts that benefit people and the planet. It reflects the work of 37 leading health and climate scientists from 16 countries, using the best available evidence for optimal health.


→ United Nations Climate Change E-Learn (mixed free & paid)

Browse the United Nations Climate Change e-learn courses: these are a valuable resource for those looking to deepen their knowledge around specific climate change, sustainability and nutrition topics. These web-based short courses and tutorials are free of charge and range in length from 30 minutes to 12 hours. They are self paced, some with multiple language options, and systematically cover topics such as Sustainable Diet, Human Health and Climate Change, Water, Gender and Environment, and Introduction to Sustainable Finance. We suggest the following as good places to start:


Physicians Association for Nutrition (PAN) Academy (mixed free & paid)

The PAN Academy is an online learning platform that makes nutrition education accessible to everyone. Nutrition has great power to influence health but, at the same time, nutrition education is often neglected in medical school curricula. PAN is on a mission to change this imbalance by offering nutritional science knowledge in the form of fun and engaging video lessons to medical students, physicians and healthcare professionals. With this know-how, they can become even better at supporting patients to make more informed food choices for their health.

PAN’s educational offerings are not only for medical professionals. Just about anyone interested in learning how healthy, whole food plant-based nutrition can save lives, treat and prevent the most deadly non-communicable diseases and mitigate climate change is invited to take the courses.

There are many free courses as well as courses that are for paid members-only.


CASCADES’ Sustainable Health Systems Courses (mixed free & paid)

CASCADES, (Creating a Sustainable Canadian Health System in a Climate Crisis) is a pan-Canadian health system that supports a healthy planet, is caring and equitable, and serves communities so that they thrive. Their programs connect you to a growing movement of change-makers while developing the skills required to advance climate action in healthcare.

They offer several free courses including a Fundamentals of Sustainable Health Systems Course for frontline staff, administrators, and leaders within care delivery, professional, and support organizations.

They also offer a suite of continuing professional development training programs for individuals in health systems working towards environmentally sustainable healthcare.


Healthy people, healthy planet: a flexitarian approach to sustainable healthy diets (self-study course)

This self-study continuing education course was developed by Christine McCullum-Gomez, PhD, RDN, LD with Today’s Dietitian and made complimentary through January 31, 2023 with support from Danone North America. It was approved by the Commission on Dietetic Registration to offer 2 Continuing Professional Education Units. The course is condensed into a 7-page overview of the EAT-Lancet Commission’s 2019 planetary health diet, which is a largely plant-based flexitarian diet, and includes research on benefits and barriers to achieving the diet. The course discusses the principles of a flexitarian diet, describes the nutritional advantages of a flexitarian diet, examines the health and environmental benefits of a flexitarian diet; and provides strategies Dietitian-Nutritionists (D-Ns) can use when counselling their clients on implementing a flexitarian diet. There is a short quiz and evaluation to receive the certificate.

Editor’s note: This course focuses on the consumption portion of sustainable diets through balancing plant and animal foods. The systems that our plants and animals come from are equally as important as the balance in our diets. As D-Ns we can also support sustainable production, packaging, and systems that are equitable for people. Refer to the Learning Modules (LMs) in this ICDA SFS Toolkit, especially LM3: How to Contribute to Sustainable Food Systems and Diets in Your Practice.


Longer Courses (~weeks)


→→Class Central (Course fees for Certificate)

Browse Class Central for more in depth distance courses offered as MOOCS (massive open online courses) from various universities around the world. This is a database of free online courses run by a small company with a mission to make education accessible. The listing contains 100+ courses relating to the UN SDGs, several of which are of direct relevance to health and sustainability. Details vary by course but most run for 4-8 weeks and have instructors who provide feedback. Some are not accessible from all geographic regions, and while auditing is generally free, payment is required to receive an official certification. We suggest the following as good places to start.

Sustainable Food Systems: A Mediterranean Perspective
(Free – Course fees for certificate)
Future Food: Sustainable Food Systems for the 21st Century
(Free – Course fees for certificate)
Climate Adaptation in Africa
(Free – Course fees for certificate)

Credit Courses

The following distance-education courses are offer credit. We will add courses and update links as we learn about more high quality learning opportunities.


→→→ Sustainable Nutrition CAS – Bern University of Applied Sciences (2023 Aug) (German)

A sustainable food system should give the entire world population access to safe and needs-based nutrition with fairly produced food produced taking into account planetary boundaries. This requires nutritionists who help shape the transformation of the nutrition system. The CAS Sustainable Nutrition looks at global perspectives and Swiss contexts, and enables you to derive concrete nutritional recommendations for a healthy and sustainable diet in Switzerland. For this purpose, exemplary challenges are deepened and solutions are discussed that you can network with your traditional professional field or carry into new occupational fields.

The target audiences for this course are nutritionists, food scientists, and other actors in the Swiss food system with a tertiary degree and nutrition background.

  • The course will be held: November 2023 to June 2024
    • Seven two-day blocks each on Fridays/Saturdays (one block per month)
    • Lesson times: usually from 9.15 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.
  • Provides 12 ECTS credits, with a workload of 360 hours (incl. study days).
  • Cost: 5,800 CHF
  • Location: Bern campus

→→→ EFAD Sustainability in Dietetics (FREE learning modules at your own pace)

European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) has built this course upon dietitians’ voices and the rationale that it would be useful for dietitians to increase knowledge and have practical materials and resources to embed sustainability in their dietetic practice. In our modern world, we all need to contribute to reducing the global impact of climate change and consider social and economic aspects related to food choice and intake. Dietitians have a role in promoting sustainable and healthy diets.

Over the four modules of self-directed learning, 16 leading experts explain some of the complex concepts of sustainability and provide tools to translate knowledge into practice via lectures, case studies, sustainable meals and recipes as well as additional links and resources.

MODULE 1: Sustainable Food Systems and Diets
MODULE 2: Strategies towards Sustainable Diets
MODULE 3: The Food Cycle
MODULE 4: Sustainability in Dietetic Practice

Click on this link to access the EFAD Sustainability in Dietetics course that concludes with an assessment and a certificate with associated 7 EFAD points.


→→→ Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (Paid Courses)

Several food systems related courses are offered by Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. The following is a list of examples from one page. Visit other pages to see more options on agriculture and climate:

  • 2022 Sep – Feeding Cities: Improving Food Systems in Urban Areas
  • 2022 Oct – Global One Health: towards Human, Animal and Plant Health
  • 2023 Feb – Food Systems for Healthier and Sustainable Diets
  • 2023 Mar – Governance and Food Safety in International Food Chains
  • 2023 May – Making Agriculture Work for Food and Nutrition Security

→→→ Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (Paid Courses)

Stand-alone Courses in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability – Distance Courses in the Department of Strategic Sustainable Development focused on leadership and innovation for sustainability. They educate, research, and collaborate with the aim of providing methodological support for organizations that want to work strategically with sustainability, and in doing so contributing to society’s transition towards sustainability. Courses include:

  • Advanced Leadership for Sustainability, 15 credits
  • Behaviour Change for Sustainability, 6-7.5 credits
  • Enabling green and sustainable transitions, 7,5 credits
  • Foundations for Strategic Sustainable Development, 7,5 credits
  • Social Sustainability in Product- and Service Development, 7,5 credits
  • Sustainable Transport Systems, 7,5 credits
  • Introduction to Sustainable Product Development, 3 credits
  • Understanding green and sustainable transitions, 7,5 credits
  • Environmental Management, 7,5 credits

Feedback? Questions? Ideas? Contact the ICDA SFS Coordinator:  ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca

SDG Briefs: Dietitian-Nutritionist Roles

In 2015, the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were put forward by the United Nations, designed to transform our world towards the accomplishment of inclusive and sustainable development (United Nations, 2020).

Each of the following briefs explore possible roles for Dietitian-Nutritionists (D-N) for each of the key UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) listed. Briefs describe how D-N are impacted from – and are/can be impacted by – the work of D-N. The briefs are intended to help increase your awareness of the SDGs, provide an overview of what is currently being done to meet each goal, and how D-N can contribute.

We have included the most immediately relevant SDG in this section, and we are working towards creating briefs for the remaining goals in the near future. Please refer to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals website for more information on all 17 goals and the infographic section of this toolkit for more visual representations of each brief.

* The original text for these briefs were developed by students of the Nutrition in Global Health and Development class at Acadia University and edited by the ICDA SFS toolkit team.


Feedback? Questions? Ideas? Contact the ICDA SFS Coordinator:  ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca