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After a prolonged decline, estimates show that global hunger has increased. In 2017, over 820 million people–one out of every nine–faced chronic food deprivation. Without increased efforts, UN agencies project that “the world will fall short of achieving the SDG target of eradicating hunger by 2030”.(1) The burden of child stunting and wasting remains unacceptably high: nearly 151 million children under the age of five have stunted growth, and 50 million are threatened by wasting. At the same time, 38 million under-five children are overweight and more than 672 million adults–more than one in eight–are obese. Increasingly, this malnutrition is concentrated in urban areas: despite the vaunted urban advantage, one in three stunted children lives in an urban area, and the global rise in overweight and obesity mostly affects urban adults.(2)

Over the last two decades there has been a welcome shift in policy debates …