High rates of food insecurity and diets that lead to disease are two sides of a dysfunctional food system. To create food systems that better support health and health equity, the Institute conducts research, policy analysis, advocacy and education that supports changing the structures, institutional practices, and environments that limit access to healthy affordable food and often make unhealthy food choices easier than healthy ones.
To support healthier diets, our work also seeks to address other fundamental causes of malnourishment such as the high cost of housing and health care, inadequate safety net programs, and food businesses that seek to profit by promoting unhealthy products.
The Institute has conducted research on the prevalence of predatory marketing, the targeted promotion of unhealthy ultra-processed foods to Black, Latinx and other communities and policies to reduce the practice in cities. Our work has supported legislation in New York State to ban predatory food marketing, and contributed to the adoption of an executive order in New York City to ban unhealthy food marketing on city property.
