Devex: What’s the business case for investing in nutrition?
7 October 2025Across the globe, millions of children are trapped in diets dominated by cheap, ultra-processed foods. It’s the reason why this year, obesity overtook underweight as the leading form of malnutrition, with UNICEF recently finding that obesity now affects 188 million children and adolescents — 1 in 10 — throughout the world.
The scale of the problem is staggering — and with traditional aid flows crumbling, many are looking to the private sector to fill the gap. But doing so raises a fundamental question: Can tackling childhood malnutrition deliver not just health benefits, but economic returns?
The answer, it turns out, is complicated. But last week, dozens of experts from both the private and public sectors gathered at the Building Bridges conference in Geneva, Switzerland, to brainstorm nutrition’s business case and to understand whether a profitable investment path for nutrition could actually exist.
On the one hand, there’s the larger, macroeconomic case: the World Bank estimates that for every dollar spent on nutrition, the world gets $23 in return. That’s calculated by measuring how interventions such as supplements, breastfeeding promotion, and food fortification can improve children’s health, cognition, and productivity — reducing health care costs, increasing educational attainment, and boosting workforce potential as a result.
But for many, those benefits are seen as long-term, diffuse, and spread across sectors, which makes nutrition a difficult proposition for investors seeking quick, measurable returns.
“What we’ve heard a lot from investors is that they think [investing in nutrition] is very interesting, but they want to see it work first,” said Thierry Buchs, the senior policy adviser at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, or SDC, at a session during the Building Bridges conference. “First, come and see us with a portfolio, and with the business case, because we have to make sure it’s investable and that we get the money back. And then we’ll invest.”
Such hesitations aren’t the only hurdle. The world would need to spend an extra $13 billion a year just to roll out these interventions, the World Bank found, alongside stronger policies to curb obesity and make healthier diets more accessible. While the private sector is investing in food and agriculture — and more than 60% of impact investors have at least some capital in the sector — the vast majority of those investments don’t go toward healthy foods, explained Greg Garrett, the executive director of the Access to Nutrition Initiative, or ATNi.
Instead, he said, that cash often goes toward the same companies producing ultra-processed foods — the types of products that are engineered for mass production, extended shelf life, and higher profit margins.
“The problem is not the money. It’s not the capital,” said Garrett, speaking during the Building Bridges session on the topic. “[I]t’s what that capital is seeking to achieve.”
The Netherlands-based foundation tries to push the private sector toward healthier food systems by benchmarking companies on their nutrition policies and urging investors to tie financing to stronger standards. Efforts like these aim to shift incentives — showing that investing in better nutrition can protect long-term returns, reduce regulatory risk, and meet growing consumer demand for healthier foods.