🔗 Share this article

This scourge of highly processed food items is an international crisis. Even though their use is particularly high in Western nations, forming the majority of the typical food intake in nations like Britain and America, for example, UPFs are replacing fresh food in diets on all corners of the globe.

In the latest development, a comprehensive global study on the dangers to well-being of UPFs was published. It cautioned that such foods are subjecting millions of people to persistent health issues, and called for urgent action. Previously in the year, a major children's agency revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were overweight than underweight for the first time, as unhealthy snacks overwhelms diets, with the sharpest climbs in low- and middle-income countries.

A leading public health expert, professor of public health nutrition at the a major educational institution in Brazil, and one of the study's contributors, says that businesses motivated by financial gain, not consumer preferences, are driving the shift in eating patterns.

For parents, it can feel like the entire food system is opposing them. “At times it feels like we have absolutely no power over what we are putting on our child's dish,” says one mother from the Indian subcontinent. We conversed with her and four other parents from across the globe on the growing challenges and frustrations of supplying a healthy diet in the age of UPFs.

In Nepal: Battling a Child's Desire for Packaged Snacks

Bringing up a child in Nepal today often feels like trying to swim against the current, especially when it comes to food. I make food at home as much as I can, but the instant my daughter leaves the house, she is bombarded with brightly packaged snacks and sugary drinks. She continually yearns for cookies, chocolates and processed juice drinks – products intensively promoted to children. Just one pizza commercial on TV is enough for her to ask, “Is it possible to eat pizza today?”

Even the educational setting perpetuates unhealthy habits. Her canteen serves sweetened fruit juice every Tuesday, which she eagerly awaits. She is given a packet of six cookies from a friend on the school bus and chocolates on birthdays, and encounters a french fry stand right outside her school gate.

At times it feels like the entire food environment is opposing parents who are merely attempting to raise fit youngsters.

As someone working in the Nepal Non-Communicable Disease Alliance and spearheading a project called Advocating for Better School Diets, I grasp this issue profoundly. Yet even with my knowledge, keeping my young child healthy is incredibly difficult.

These constant encounters at school, in transit and online make it next to unattainable for parents to restrict ultra-processed foods. It is not just about children’s choices; it is about a dietary structure that encourages and promotes unhealthy eating.

And the data reflects exactly what households such as my own are experiencing. A comprehensive population report found that 69% of children between six and 23 months ate unhealthy foods, and 43% were already drinking flavored liquids.

These numbers are reflected in what I see every day. Research conducted in the area where I live reported that a notable percentage of schoolchildren were overweight and more than seven percent were obese, figures strongly correlated with the rise in junk food consumption and more sedentary lifestyles. Another study showed that many Nepali children eat sugary treats or manufactured savory snacks nearly every day, and this regular consumption is linked to high levels of oral health problems.

Nepal urgently needs tighter rules, improved educational settings and stricter marketing regulations. Before that happens, families will continue waging a constant war against junk food – an individual snack bag at a time.

St Vincent and the Grenadines: ‘Greasy, Salty, Sugary Fast Food is the Preference’

My position is a bit different as I was forced to relocate from an island in our chain of islands that was devastated by a major hurricane last year. But it is also part of the stark reality that is facing parents in a part of the world that is enduring the gravest consequences of environmental shifts.

“Conditions definitely becomes more severe if a cyclone or volcanic eruption wipes out most of your crops.”

Before the occurrence of the storm, as a nutrition instructor, I was deeply concerned about the growing spread of fast food restaurants. Currently, even smaller village shops are participating in the change of a country once characterized by a diet of nutritious home-produced fruits and vegetables, to one where greasy, salty, sugary fast food, full of synthetic components, is the preference.

But the scenario definitely deteriorates if a severe weather event or volcanic eruption destroys most of your crops. Unprocessed ingredients becomes scarce and prohibitively costly, so it is really difficult to get your kids to consume healthy meals.

Despite having a regular work I flinch at food prices now and have often turned to picking one of items such as vegetables and meat and eggs when feeding my four children. Serving fewer meals or reduced helpings have also become part of the post-disaster coping strategies.

Also it is very easy when you are juggling a demanding job with parenting, and rushing around in the morning, to just give the children a couple of coins to buy snacks at school. Regrettably, most campus food stalls only offer ultra-processed snacks and sugary sodas. The outcome of these hurdles, I fear, is an growth in the already alarming levels of non-communicable illnesses such as blood sugar disorders and cardiovascular strain.

Uganda: ‘It’s in Every Mall and Every Market’

The sign of a international restaurant franchise stands prominently at the entrance of a mall in a urban area, tempting you to pass by without stopping at the takeaway window.

Many of the children and parents visiting the mall have never gone beyond the borders of this East African nation. They certainly don’t know about the bygone era of hardship that motivated the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the brand name represent all things desirable.

Throughout commercial complexes and each trading place, there is fast food for all budgets. As one of the costlier choices, the fried chicken chain is considered a luxury. It is the place Kampala’s families go to mark birthdays and baptisms. It is the children’s prize when they get a good school report. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for Christmas.

“Mom, do you know that some people pack fried chicken for school lunch,” my 14-year-old daughter, who attends a school in the area, tells me. She says that on the days they do not pack that, they pack food from a regional restaurant brand selling everything from cooked morning dishes to burgers.

It is the weekend, and I am only {half-listening|