🔗 Share this article

This menace of highly processed food items is an international crisis. Even though their intake is especially elevated in the west, constituting more than half the typical food intake in the UK and the US, for example, UPFs are displacing whole foods in diets on all corners of the globe.

Recently, an extensive international analysis on the health threats of UPFs was issued. It warned that such foods are exposing millions of people to long-term harm, and urged urgent action. In a prior announcement, a global fund for children revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were obese than too thin for the first time, as processed edibles floods diets, with the most dramatic increases in low- and middle-income countries.

A noted nutrition professor, professor of public health nutrition at the a major educational institution in Brazil, and one of the review's authors, says that profit-driven corporations, not personal decisions, are fueling the transformation in dietary behavior.

For parents, it can appear that the entire food system is opposing them. “On occasion it feels like we have absolutely no power over what we are putting on our children's meals,” says one mother from India. We spoke to her and four other parents from internationally on the growing challenges and irritations of ensuring a healthy diet in the age of UPFs.

Nepal: ‘She Craves Cookies, Chocolate and Juice’

Raising a child in this South Asian country today often feels like fighting a losing battle, especially when it comes to food. I prepare meals at home as much as I can, but the instant my daughter leaves the house, she is surrounded by vibrantly wrapped snacks and sugary drinks. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and bottled fruit beverages – products heavily marketed to children. One solitary pizza commercial on TV is enough for her to ask, “Can we have pizza today?”

Even the educational setting encourages unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves sugary juice every Tuesday, which she anxiously anticipates. She is given a small package of biscuits from a friend on the school bus and chocolates on birthdays, and faces a snack bar right outside her school gate.

Some days it feels like the complete dietary landscape is opposing parents who are merely attempting to raise well-nourished kids.

As someone employed by the an organization fighting chronic illnesses and spearheading a project called Encouraging Nutritious Meals in Education, I understand this issue deeply. Yet even with my professional background, keeping my school-age girl healthy is extremely challenging.

These constant encounters at school, in transit and online make it next to unattainable for parents to curb ultra-processed foods. It is not just about the selections of the young; it is about a nutritional framework that normalises and fosters unhealthy eating.

And the data mirrors precisely what households such as my own are going through. A demographic health study found that 69% of children between six and 23 months ate unhealthy foods, and a substantial portion were already drinking flavored liquids.

These figures resonate with what I see every day. An analysis conducted in the district where I live reported that a notable percentage of schoolchildren were overweight and more than seven percent were clinically overweight, figures strongly correlated with the increase in unhealthy snacking and less active lifestyles. Further research showed that many kids in Nepal eat candy or manufactured savory snacks nearly every day, and this habitual eating is tied to high levels of dental cavities.

The country urgently needs tighter rules, healthier school environments and more stringent promotion limits. Before that happens, families will continue engaging in an ongoing struggle against junk food – one biscuit packet at a time.

Caribbean Challenges: When Fast Food Becomes the Default

My circumstances is a bit different as I was compelled to move from an island in our group of isles that was ravaged by a powerful storm last year. But it is also part of the harsh truth that is facing parents in a area that is experiencing the gravest consequences of global warming.

“Conditions definitely worsens if a storm or volcano activity eliminates most of your crops.”

Before the occurrence of the storm, as a food nutrition and health teacher, I was very worried about the increasing proliferation of fast food restaurants. Today, even local corner stores are complicit in the transformation of a country once known for a diet of nutritious home-produced fruits and vegetables, to one where fatty, briny, candied fast food, packed with synthetic components, is the preference.

But the condition definitely worsens if a natural disaster or mountain activity decimates most of your crops. Nutritious whole foods becomes hard to find and extremely pricey, so it is incredibly challenging to get your kids to have a proper diet.

Despite having a steady job I am shocked by food prices now and have often opted for selecting from 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 managing a challenging career with parenting, and scrambling in the morning, to just give the children a little money to buy snacks at school. Sadly, most educational snack bars only offer highly packaged treats and sugary sodas. The result of these difficulties, I fear, is an rise in the already epidemic rates of lifestyle diseases such as adult-onset diabetes and high blood pressure.

Kampala's Landscape: A Fast-Food Dominated Environment

The logo of a international restaurant franchise towers conspicuously at the entrance of a commercial complex 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 traveled past the borders of the country. They certainly don’t know about the historical economic crisis that motivated the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the famous acronym represent all things modern.

Throughout commercial complexes and all local bazaars, there is convenience meals for any income level. As one of the pricier selections, the fried chicken chain is considered a special occasion. It is the place Kampala’s families go to mark birthdays and baptisms. It is the children’s prize when they get a positive academic results. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for the holidays.

“Mother, do you know that some people take fried chicken for school lunch,” my teenage girl, 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 morning meals to burgers.

It is the end of the week, and I am only {half-listening|