Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2011, 8 368 smallholder agricultural productivity increases incomes and allows families to purchase more nutritious food such as fruits, vegetables, and animal products, farmer-focused initiatives focusing on the production side can also improve diet diversity and the associated micronutrients lacking in the diet of sub-Saharan populations [63,64]. Diets can be improved through production by breeding of more nutritious crops including traditional local foods and leafy greens and improved nutritionally rich processed foods. The consumer subsystem is made up of consumers and food preparers, products, foods, dishes and meals. Within the consumer subsystem, access to these foods (either grown or purchased), safe and nutritious preparation of foods, and consumption (with equal distribution across a household) are all critical elements of improved nutrition. Typically, poor households subsist on monotonous staple-based diets. They often lack access to micronutrient-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, animal source foods (fish, meat, eggs, and dairy products) for consumption. Traditional local foods of high nutrient content and wild food are often underutilized and neglected. Lastly, the nutrition subsystem is made up of food components including macro and micronutrients, fiber, water, and non-nutrient factors. The status of the nutrition subsystem is reliant on the health state of an individual, which is determined by the proper digestion of food, along with the absorption and utilization of nutrients within the body. To have food available and accessible to eat, whether purchased at the market or grown at home, is not the sole solution to food security. A person’s body must be in good physical condition in order to properly utilize the food and its micronutrients efficiently for optimum health. Utilization requires not only an adequate diet, but also a healthy physical environment, including safe drinking water, better knowledge of nutritional needs for women and children, improved infant feeding practices, fair intra-household distribution of food, adequate sanitation and hygiene, decreased burden of infectious disease, and the knowledge and understanding of proper care for oneself, for food preparation and safety [44]. A functional food and nutrition system should interact with other systems, such as the health systems, water and sanitation systems, and agriculture production systems, to be effective in reducing hidden hunger [62]. The main problem is to understand how the food and nutrition systems can work at the country policy level and how systems approaches can be implemented on the ground. Both nutrition and hunger fall within a broader mandate that necessitates the inclusion of agriculture, health, education, water and sanitation, and other departments. This poses clear challenges to leadership and coordination in many developing countries. Too often, no single entity takes primary responsibility for working at the nexus of systems in research, policy and program development. Many governments under invest in programs and efforts to reduce food insecurity, and fail to provide the essential domestic public goods and investments to integrate agriculture and health systems for sustained growth. One important explanation is to be found in the complexity that policy makers and governments encounter in the implementation of multi-sectoral interventions, here deemed as indispensable for tackling the multi-dimensions of food insecurity. There needs to be new political incentives and institutional arrangements, particularly in sectors that are traditionally thought of as very distinct—agriculture and health. It is much easier to design an intervention that looks separately at three core sectors like agriculture, health and nutrition, and does not tackle complex problems that involve land, gender, trade and markets, among others.