The Global Fight Against Junk Food: Parents from Kenya to Nepal Share Their Struggles

This plague of industrially manufactured edible products is a worldwide phenomenon. While their consumption is particularly high in developed countries, constituting the majority of the typical food intake in places such as the United Kingdom and United States, for example, UPFs are displacing whole foods in diets on all corners of the globe.

This month, an extensive international analysis on the risks to physical condition of UPFs was released. It warned that such foods are subjecting millions of people to long-term harm, and urged swift intervention. In a prior announcement, a global fund for children revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were overweight than malnourished for the first time, as junk food floods diets, with the most dramatic increases in less affluent regions.

A noted nutrition professor, a scholar in the field of nourishment science at the a prominent Brazilian university, and one of the review's authors, says that companies focused on earnings, not personal decisions, are propelling the transformation in dietary behavior.

For parents, it can appear that the whole nutritional landscape is undermining them. “On occasion it feels like we have absolutely no power over what we are serving on our children's meals,” says one mother from South Asia. We spoke to her and four other parents from around the world on the expanding hurdles and annoyances of providing a balanced nourishment in the age of UPFs.

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

Nurturing a child in Nepal today often feels like fighting a losing battle, especially when it comes to food. I cook at home as much as I can, but the moment my daughter steps outside, she is bombarded with colorfully presented snacks and sugar-laden liquids. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and bottled fruit beverages – products aggressively advertised to children. A single pizza commercial on TV is enough for her to ask, “Are we getting pizza today?”

Even the school environment reinforces unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves sweetened fruit juice every Tuesday, which she eagerly awaits. She receives a six-piece biscuit pack from a friend on the school bus and chocolates on birthdays, and confronts a french fry stand right outside her school gate.

On certain occasions it feels like the whole nutritional ecosystem is undermining parents who are simply trying to raise fit youngsters.

As someone associated with the Nepal Non-Communicable Disease Alliance and leading a project called Encouraging Nutritious Meals in Education, I grasp this issue profoundly. Yet even with my knowledge, keeping my young child healthy is extremely challenging.

These ongoing experiences at school, in transit and online make it almost unfeasible for parents to limit ultra-processed foods. It is not simply about the selections of the young; it is about a food system that makes standard and fosters unhealthy eating.

And the statistics mirrors precisely what families like mine are going through. A recent national survey found that over two-thirds of children between six and 23 months ate poor dietary items, and nearly half were already drinking flavored liquids.

These numbers are reflected in what I see every day. Research conducted in the region where I live reported that a notable percentage of schoolchildren were above a healthy size and a smaller yet concerning fraction were obese, figures directly linked with the rise in processed food intake and less active lifestyles. Additional analysis showed that many Nepali children eat sugary treats or processed savoury foods almost daily, and this regular consumption is associated with high levels of dental cavities.

The country urgently needs more robust regulations, better nutritional atmospheres in schools and stricter marketing regulations. In the meantime, families will continue waging a constant war against unhealthy snacks – one biscuit packet at a time.

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

My position is a bit particular as I was forced to relocate from an island in our chain of islands that was destroyed by a severe cyclone last year. But it is also part of the bleak situation that is facing parents in a part of the world that is enduring the very worst effects of climate change.

“The circumstances definitely deteriorates if a hurricane or volcanic eruption destroys most of your crops.”

Before the occurrence of the storm, as a nutrition instructor, I was extremely troubled about the rising expansion of fast food restaurants. Currently, even community markets are participating in the change of a country once known for a diet of nutritious home-produced fruits and vegetables, to one where oily, salted, sweetened fast food, full of synthetic components, is the preference.

But the situation definitely deteriorates if a natural disaster or mountain activity wipes out most of your produce. Fresh, healthy food becomes rare and prohibitively costly, so it is incredibly challenging to get your kids to have a proper diet.

In spite of having a steady job I flinch at food prices now and have often turned to selecting from items such as vegetables and animal products 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 balancing a challenging career with parenting, and scrambling in the morning, to just give the children a couple of coins to buy snacks at school. Unfortunately, most educational snack bars only offer highly packaged treats and carbonated beverages. The outcome of these challenges, I fear, is an rise in the already epidemic rates of chronic conditions such as blood sugar disorders and hypertension.

Kampala's Landscape: A Fast-Food Dominated Environment

The symbol of a global fast-food brand towers conspicuously at the entrance of a shopping center in a city district, challenging you to pass by without stopping at the drive-through.

Many of the children and parents visiting the mall have never ventured outside the borders of the country. They certainly don’t know about the past financial depression that led the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the three letters represent all things desirable.

In every mall and all local bazaars, there is fast food for any income level. As one of the more expensive options, the fried chicken chain is considered a luxury. It is the place local households go to mark birthdays and baptisms. It is the children’s reward when they get a positive academic results. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for Christmas.

“Mother, do you know that some people pack fried chicken for school lunch,” my adolescent child, 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 local quick-service outlet selling everything from fried breakfasts to burgers.

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