2025 FoodSwitch State of the Food Supply Report: Planetary Health Edition
Enter your details to download the State of the Food Supply Report.
Food governance
Program overview
Law is a powerful tool to promote public health. Yet despite Australia’s leadership in areas like tobacco control and road safety, law remains underused as a tool to promote healthy and sustainable population diets. The Food Governance Program seeks to change this.
Our aim is to improve dietary intake at scale by monitoring the global food supply, assessing food policy impacts, and strategically strengthening food policies and regulations to promote health and sustainability.
Program objectives
Monitor and evaluate the performance of existing food policies and regulations by leveraging the Institute’s FoodSwitch dataset
Analyse regulatory innovation worldwide to develop recommendations on best-practice food regulation
Work closely with UN agencies, national and state governments, public health and consumer organisations and academic collaborators to translate evidence into effective law and policy change.
View projects
Food policy
Every year, more than 11 million people die from diet-related diseases, and billions more face food insecurity, malnutrition, or hunger.
UNSW Sydney and The George Institute for Global Health sign expanded 10-year affiliation agreement
News / Media release
Beyond the body episode 1 Not One-Size-Fits-All: How Sex and Gender shape our health
Podcast
Beyond the body episode 2 Caring & Careers: The hidden load of carers
Podcast
Professor Anushka Patel
Profile
Professor Anushka Patel is CEO and Director of The George Institute for Global Health and Scientia Professor at UNSW, Sydney. She is a cardiologist with research interests in the prevention and management of common chronic conditions through large-scale clinical trials and implementation science.
Anushka undertook her medical training at the University of Queensland, with subsequent postgraduate research degrees from Harvard University and University of Sydney. Anushka is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and is a Director and Trustee of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute.
One in five US foods and drinks contain synthetic dyes, study shows
News / Media release
Dr Elizabeth Dunford
Profile
Elizabeth Dunford is a Project Consultant for The George Institute for Global Health’s Food Policy Division, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina.
She is known internationally for her work in monitoring the global food supply and in the development of novel technologies to support this work in both developed and developing countries. She led the development of the Australian and US FoodSwitch food composition databases which are used to monitor changes in the nutritional composition of the food supply. The Australian database she developed in her PhD was used to create the FoodSwitch smartphone application; an innovative tool that helps consumers select healthier food choices. FoodSwitch has been downloaded >1,000,000 times and has been launched in multiple countries.
Elizabeth has an undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition, a Masters degree in Public Health, and a PhD in Public Health from The University of Sydney. In the 10 years following the completion of her postgraduate qualification in Public Health, Elizabeth has published 100+ peer-reviewed journal articles and has authored multiple commissioned policy documents for the World Health Organization, Access to Nutrition Initiative, World Bank and Unicef.
Meta-research and evidence synthesis unit
Program overview:
The meta-research and evidence synthesis unit is dedicated to improving healthcare and the knowledge ecosystem through:
Meta-research(research on research) : to analyse the philosophical basis, methods, reporting, evaluation, and incentives for research. We also specialise in research priority setting, and core outcome set development.
Evidence synthesis: conducting scoping reviews, evidence gap maps, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, rapid evidence synthesis, and qualitative evidence synthesis.
Capacity building: On evidence synthesis , meta-research, and its application.
Program objectives:
The overarching objectives of this program are to:
To improve the quality of primary research, evidence synthesis, and knowledge translation.
To foster pro-justice and pro-equity approaches in the knowledge ecosystem.
To conduct high quality evidence synthesis using fit for purpose methods to inform policy, and practice.
Health systems strengthening for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)
Program overview:
Our global Health Systems Strengthening for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) program is focused on the conduct of multidisciplinary collaborative research to support countries’ strategic progression towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3.8: Universal access to high-quality essential health care.
Led by Dr Laura Downey, our global team comprises health economists, health policy specialists, epidemiologists, statisticians, and clinician researchers. We have active research and advocacy partnerships with academia, civil society organizations, government departments, health service providers, and multilateral organizations in every continent, where our research predominantly focuses on taking a primary healthcare approach to ensure that everyone can equitably access the essential health services they require without experiencing financial hardship in doing so. The types of research we conduct fall broadly into the following domains:
Designing an
Evaluation and system reform
Program overview:
System reform is complex, long-term, and involves multiple stakeholders. Traditional evaluation methods, which often focus on short-term outcomes and linear cause-effect relationships, are often not well suited to informing or evaluating system change.
The George Institute’s Evaluation and System Reform Program focuses on furthering the role of evaluation in system reform in recognition of the power of evaluative data to contribute to social change - this has implications for what is evaluated and how evaluations are conducted. There is an implicit equity agenda – recognising that systems need to reform to benefit those who need them most.
We are concerned with:
Conducting ‘mission critical’ evaluations, which in practice means scale, reach and equity
Using participatory approaches at all stages, since this increases the potential of evaluation findings being relevant and used
Building regular and timely cycles of feedback to imple