South Asia Nutrition Knowledge Initiative: Abstract digest December 2025

The seventh edition of the Abstract Digest highlights a nutrition landscape in South Asia—and globally— marked by persistent anemia, poor dietary quality, and uneven progress in delivering effective interventions at scale. Several studies focus on anemia reduction, including a series published by The Lancet, showing that despite long-standing global commitments, most countries remain off track to meet current targets. New modelling evidence suggests that the existing Sustainable Development Goal of halving anemia prevalence among women of reproductive age by 2030 is unlikely to be achieved with current approaches, underscoring the need to prioritize more realistic and cost-effective strategies. Across maternal, child, and adolescent nutrition, featured studies examine trends and determinants of anemia among mother–child dyads in India, the effectiveness of multiple micronutrient supplementation during pregnancy in Bangladesh, and the strong link between maternal and child dietary diversity across low- and middle-income countries. Other articles draw attention to the growing influence of food environments and modern food systems in South Asia, including high consumption of ultra-processed foods and emerging links between climate change, food systems, and inflammation-related health outcomes. This edition also highlights evidence from Nepal on adolescent nutrition challenges and implementation research, alongside reviews pointing to gaps in evaluation methods and the need for better-aligned measurement tools. Together, the articles in this edition reinforce the importance of aligning evidence, policy, and delivery systems, and call for more rigorous evaluation of scalable nutrition interventions in real-world settings. A blog from the recent annual Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia conference, held in Kathmandu, Nepal and online from December 2–4, highlights key lessons on what it takes to achieve nutrition impact at scale. Please scroll down to explore these articles. If you were forwarded this Abstract Digest, we invite you to subscribe. Happy reading!