🔗 Share this article

The scourge of industrially manufactured edible products is an international crisis. While their consumption is particularly high in developed countries, making up the majority of the usual nourishment in the UK and the US, for example, UPFs are taking the place of natural ingredients in diets on all corners of the globe.

Recently, the world’s largest review on the dangers to well-being of UPFs was issued. It alerted that such foods are leaving millions of people to persistent health issues, and demanded immediate measures. Previously in the year, a global fund for children revealed that more children around the world were overweight than too thin for the historic moment, as junk food floods diets, with the sharpest climbs in less affluent regions.

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

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 placing onto our child's dish,” says one mother from the Indian subcontinent. We interviewed her and four other parents from internationally on the expanding hurdles and irritations of supplying 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 fighting a losing battle, 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 surrounded by brightly packaged snacks and sugary drinks. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and bottled fruit beverages – products aggressively advertised to children. A single pizza commercial on TV is sufficient for her to ask, “Is it possible to eat pizza today?”

Even the academic atmosphere perpetuates unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves sugary juice every Tuesday, which she looks forward to. She gets 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.

Some days it feels like the complete dietary landscape is opposing parents who are just striving to raise healthy children.

As someone employed by the a national health coalition and leading a project called Advocating for Better School Diets, I grasp this issue profoundly. 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 children’s choices; it is about a nutritional framework that encourages and advocates for unhealthy eating.

And the figures reflects exactly what families like mine are facing. A demographic health study found that 69% of children between six and 23 months ate unhealthy foods, and nearly half were already drinking sweetened beverages.

These numbers resonate with what I see every day. An analysis conducted in the region where I live reported that a notable percentage of schoolchildren were above a healthy size and 7.1% were suffering from obesity, figures closely associated with the surge in unhealthy snacking and increasingly inactive lifestyles. Additional analysis showed that many Nepali children eat sugary treats or processed savoury foods almost daily, and this frequent intake is linked to high levels of tooth decay.

Nepal urgently needs tighter rules, improved educational settings and stricter marketing regulations. In the meantime, families will continue engaging in an ongoing struggle against processed items – a single cookie pack at a time.

Caribbean Challenges: When Fast Food Becomes the Default

My situation is a bit different as I was forced to relocate from an island in our chain of islands that was devastated by a powerful storm last year. But it is also part of the bleak situation that is facing parents in a region that is enduring the very worst effects of environmental shifts.

“The circumstances definitely becomes more severe if a cyclone or volcanic eruption wipes out most of your vegetation.”

Prior to the storm, as a nutrition instructor, I was deeply concerned about the growing spread of fast food restaurants. Nowadays, even smaller village shops are participating in the shift of a country once characterized by a diet of fresh regional fruits and vegetables, to one where fatty, briny, candied fast food, full of artificial ingredients, is the favorite.

But the condition definitely worsens if a severe weather event or volcanic eruption wipes out most of your vegetation. Nutritious whole foods becomes rare and very expensive, so it is really difficult to get your kids to consume healthy meals.

In spite of having a stable employment I wince at food prices now and have often opted for picking one of items such as legumes and pulses and protein sources when feeding my four children. Serving fewer meals or reduced helpings have also become part of the recovery survival methods.

Also it is quite convenient when you are balancing a demanding job with parenting, and rushing around in the morning, to just give the children a little money to buy snacks at school. Unfortunately, most school tuck shops only offer highly packaged treats and sugary sodas. The outcome of these challenges, I fear, is an growth in the already widespread prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

The Allure of Fast Food in Uganda

The sign of a international restaurant franchise looms large at the entrance of a shopping center in a Kampala neighbourhood, challenging you to pass by without stopping at the takeaway window.

Many of the kids and caregivers visiting the mall have never traveled past the borders of this East African nation. They certainly don’t know about the historical economic crisis that inspired the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the brand name represent all things desirable.

In every mall and every market, there is convenience meals for all budgets. As one of the more expensive options, the fried chicken chain is considered a special occasion. It is the place Kampala’s families go to observe 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.

“Mum, do you know that some people bring takeaway 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 popular east African fast-food chain selling everything from fried breakfasts to burgers.

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