Rethinking food aid in humanitarian crisis

New initiatives for disaster relief for the recovery of devastated communities are needed to establish resilient food systems. Food aid is a crucial part of humanitarian aid because it aims to relieve affected populations from being food insecure during and after emergency situations. In most cases, food is transported from various regions around the world, and imported into the affected region. This takes time, especially if the humanitarian crisis involves floods, disease, or war conflict. Rethinking food aid in humanitarian crises proposes to find new ways that improve the accessibility and desirability of food, which considers the local food system. This solution could be, for instance, an initiative that empowers local cooks to prepare food in times of a humanitarian crisis. In this way, vulnerable communities have access to tasty options that consider the local traditional diet. Or this solution could include handing out assistance cards for local vendors to stimulate the local food sectors. Rethinking food aid could also include easy-to-use and culturally appropriate rapid dietary quality tools to collect information of consumption of particular food groups. These tools take at most 5 min to administer and could derive indicators of diet quality and patterns of at-risk populations during and after humanitarian crises.