🔗 Share this article

This menace of industrially manufactured edible products is an international crisis. Even though their consumption is especially elevated in developed countries, constituting more than half the typical food intake in nations like Britain and America, for example, UPFs are replacing fresh food in diets on every continent.

This month, an extensive international analysis on the risks to physical condition of UPFs was published. It alerted that such foods are subjecting millions of people to long-term harm, and urged 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 dominates 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 a major educational institution in Brazil, and one of the study's contributors, says that profit-driven corporations, not individual choices, are propelling the shift in eating patterns.

For parents, it can feel like the complete dietary environment is opposing them. “Sometimes it feels like we have zero control over what we are placing onto our child's dish,” says one mother from India. We spoke to her and four other parents from internationally on the growing challenges and frustrations of providing a nutritious food regimen in the era of ultra-processing.

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

Bringing up a child in the Himalayan nation today often feels like battling an uphill struggle, especially when it comes to food. I make food at home as much as I can, but the moment my daughter goes out, she is encircled by colorfully presented snacks and sugar-laden liquids. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and bottled fruit beverages – products heavily marketed to children. One solitary pizza commercial on TV is sufficient for her to ask, “Are we getting pizza today?”

Even the academic atmosphere reinforces unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves sweetened fruit juice every Tuesday, which she anxiously anticipates. She gets 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.

At times it feels like the entire food environment is opposing parents who are merely attempting to raise well-nourished kids.

As someone working in the Nepal Non-Communicable Disease Alliance and spearheading a project called Promoting Healthy Foods in Schools, I understand this issue deeply. Yet even with my expertise, keeping my eight-year-old daughter 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 only about children’s choices; it is about a dietary structure that normalises and promotes unhealthy eating.

And the statistics mirrors precisely what families like mine are facing. A comprehensive population report found that 69% of children between six and 23 months ate poor dietary items, and 43% were already drinking sweetened beverages.

These numbers echo what I see every day. An analysis conducted in the area where I live reported that almost one in five of schoolchildren were carrying excess weight and a smaller yet concerning fraction were clinically overweight, figures strongly correlated with the increase in processed food intake and increasingly inactive lifestyles. Additional analysis showed that many Nepali children eat sweet snacks or processed savoury foods on a regular basis, and this habitual eating is associated with high levels of tooth decay.

The country urgently needs stronger policies, healthier school environments and more stringent promotion limits. Until then, families will continue fighting a daily battle against processed items – an individual snack bag at a time.

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

My circumstances is a bit different as I was forced to relocate from an island in our group of isles that was devastated by a powerful storm last year. But it is also part of the harsh truth that is affecting parents in a part of the world that is experiencing the most severe impacts of climate change.

“The situation definitely becomes more severe if a cyclone or volcanic eruption eliminates most of your plant life.”

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. Nowadays, even local corner stores 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 artificial ingredients, is the favorite.

But the scenario definitely intensifies if a natural disaster or mountain activity decimates most of your vegetation. Fresh, healthy food becomes scarce and very expensive, so it is exceptionally hard to get your kids to have a proper diet.

In spite of having a steady job I am shocked by food prices now and have often turned to choosing between items such as legumes and pulses and animal products when feeding my four children. Offering reduced portions or diminished quantities have also become part of the post-crisis adaptation techniques.

Also it is very easy when you are juggling a challenging career with parenting, and hurrying about in the morning, to just give the children a little money to buy snacks at school. Regrettably, most school tuck shops only offer ultra-processed snacks and sugary sodas. The consequence of these hurdles, I fear, is an rise in the already widespread prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as blood sugar disorders and hypertension.

Kampala's Landscape: A Fast-Food Dominated Environment

The symbol of a international restaurant franchise stands prominently at the entrance of a mall in a Kampala neighbourhood, 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 Uganda. 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 modern.

In every mall and each trading place, there is fast food for any income level. As one of the costlier choices, the fried chicken chain is considered a luxury. It is the place local households go to observe birthdays and baptisms. It is the children’s reward when they get a good school report. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for the holidays.

“Mother, do you know that some people pack 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 regional restaurant brand selling everything from fried breakfasts to burgers.

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