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

The plague of highly processed food items is an international crisis. While their use is particularly high in developed countries, constituting over 50% the typical food intake in places such as the United Kingdom and United States, for example, UPFs are replacing natural ingredients in diets on each part of the world.

In the latest development, a comprehensive global study on the dangers to well-being of UPFs was published. It cautioned that such foods are exposing millions of people to persistent health issues, and demanded urgent action. Earlier this year, a major children's agency revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were obese than too thin for the first time, as junk food floods diets, with the sharpest climbs in low- and middle-income countries.

A noted nutrition professor, a scholar in the field of nourishment science at the University of São Paulo, and one of the review's authors, says that profit-driven corporations, not consumer preferences, are driving the change in habits.

For parents, it can feel like the entire food system is undermining them. “Sometimes it feels like we have absolutely no power over what we are serving on our kid’s plate,” says one mother from the Indian subcontinent. We spoke to her and four other parents from around the world on the increasing difficulties and annoyances of ensuring a nutritious food regimen in the age of UPFs.

The Situation in Nepal: A Constant Craving for Sweets

Bringing up a child in this South Asian country today often feels like trying to swim against the current, especially when it comes to food. I prepare meals at home as much as I can, but the instant my daughter goes out, she is encircled by brightly packaged snacks and sugary drinks. She persistently desires cookies, chocolates and bottled fruit beverages – products intensively promoted to children. Just one pizza commercial on TV is enough for her to ask, “Can we have pizza today?”

Even the school environment reinforces unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves sugary juice every Tuesday, which she looks forward to. She receives a packet of six cookies 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 just striving to raise healthy children.

As someone associated with the an organization fighting chronic illnesses and leading a project called Encouraging Nutritious Meals in Education, I grasp this issue deeply. Yet even with my knowledge, keeping my eight-year-old daughter healthy is extremely challenging.

These repeated exposures at school, in transit and online make it next to unattainable for parents to curb 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 figures mirrors precisely what parents in my situation are experiencing. A recent national survey found that over two-thirds of children between six and 23 months ate unhealthy foods, and a substantial portion were already drinking sugary drinks.

These statistics are reflected in what I see every day. A study conducted in the region where I live reported that almost one in five of schoolchildren were carrying excess weight and more than seven percent were suffering from obesity, figures closely associated with the rise in processed food intake and more sedentary lifestyles. Further research showed that many youngsters of the country eat candy or processed savoury foods nearly every day, and this regular consumption is linked to high levels of dental cavities.

Nepal urgently needs more robust regulations, healthier school environments and stricter marketing regulations. Before that happens, families will continue fighting a daily battle against unhealthy snacks – one biscuit packet at a time.

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

My situation is a bit different as I was forced to relocate from an island in our group of isles that was devastated by a major hurricane last year. But it is also part of the stark reality that is confronting parents in a area that is feeling the gravest consequences of environmental shifts.

“The circumstances definitely worsens if a hurricane or volcano activity eliminates most of your crops.”

Prior to the storm, as a food nutrition and health teacher, I was deeply concerned about the rising expansion of fast food restaurants. Today, even smaller village shops are involved in the shift of a country once defined by a diet of healthy locally grown fruits and vegetables, to one where fatty, briny, candied fast food, packed with synthetic components, is the favorite.

But the condition definitely worsens if a natural disaster or volcanic eruption decimates most of your vegetation. Fresh, healthy food becomes rare and very expensive, so it is really difficult to get your kids to consume healthy meals.

Regardless of having a regular work I flinch at food prices now and have often opted for choosing between items such as legumes and pulses and protein sources when feeding my four children. Providing less food or diminished quantities have also become part of the post-crisis adaptation techniques.

Also it is quite convenient when you are managing a demanding job with parenting, and scrambling in the morning, to just give the children a small amount of cash to buy snacks at school. Unfortunately, most educational snack bars only offer manufactured munchies and carbonated beverages. The outcome of these difficulties, I fear, is an growth in the already alarming levels of chronic conditions such as blood sugar disorders and high blood pressure.

The Allure of Fast Food in Uganda

The sign of a global fast-food brand stands prominently at the entrance of a commercial complex in a urban area, daring you to pass by without stopping at the quick service lane.

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 bygone era of hardship that led the founder to start one of the first American international food chains. All they know is that the three letters represent all things modern.

Throughout commercial complexes and every market, there is fast food for all budgets. As one of the costlier choices, the fried chicken chain is considered a special occasion. It is the place city residents go to celebrate 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 the holidays.

“Mum, do you know that some people bring fast food 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 local quick-service outlet selling everything from fried breakfasts to burgers.

It is Friday evening, and I am only {half-listening|