Healthier and sustainable food systems: integrating underutilised crops in a ‘theory of change approach’

Increasingly, consumers are paying attention to healthier food diets, “healthy” food attributes (such as “freshness”, “naturalness” and “nutritional value”), and the overall sustainability of production and processing methods. Other significant trends include a growing demand for regional and locally produced/supplied and less processed food. To meet these demands, food production and processing need to evolve to preserve the raw material and natural food properties while ensuring such sustenance is healthy, tasty, and sustainable. In parallel, it is necessary to understand the influence of consumers’ practices in maintaining the beneficial food attributes from purchasing to consumption. The whole supply chain must be resilient, fair, diverse, transparent, and economically balanced to make different food systems sustainable. This chapter focuses on the role of dynamic value chains using biodiverse, underutilised crops to improve food system resilience and deliver foods with good nutritional and health properties while ensuring low environmental impacts, and resilient ecosystem functions.