‘One Bite and He Was Hooked’: From Kenya to Nepal, How Parents Are Battling Ultra-Processed Foods

T scourge of industrially manufactured edible products is a worldwide phenomenon. Although their use is particularly high in developed countries, constituting more than half the usual nourishment in places such as the United Kingdom and United States, for example, UPFs are taking the place of whole foods in diets on each part of the world.

Recently, a comprehensive global study on the dangers to well-being of UPFs was published. It alerted that such foods are leaving millions of people to chronic damage, and demanded urgent action. In a prior announcement, a major children's agency revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were overweight than underweight for the historic moment, as junk food floods diets, with the sharpest climbs in less affluent regions.

A noted nutrition professor, professor of public health nutrition at the University of São Paulo, and one of the review's authors, says that profit-driven corporations, not personal decisions, are driving the shift in eating patterns.

For parents, it can seem as if the whole nutritional landscape is undermining them. “Sometimes it feels like we have no authority over what we are serving on our children's meals,” says one mother from the Indian subcontinent. We interviewed her and four other parents from internationally on the expanding hurdles and irritations of providing a healthy diet in the time of manufactured foods.

Nepal: ‘She Craves Cookies, Chocolate and Juice’

Bringing up 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 second my daughter steps outside, she is encircled by brightly packaged snacks and sweetened beverages. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and processed juice drinks – products heavily marketed to children. A single pizza commercial on TV is sufficient for her to ask, “Can we have pizza today?”

Even the school environment perpetuates unhealthy habits. Her school lunchroom serves sweetened fruit juice every Tuesday, which she anxiously anticipates. She receives a packet of six cookies from a friend on the school bus and chocolates on birthdays, and encounters a chip shop right outside her school gate.

At times it feels like the whole nutritional ecosystem is undermining parents who are merely attempting to raise fit youngsters.

As someone working in the an organization fighting chronic illnesses and heading a project called Encouraging Nutritious Meals in Education, I understand this issue profoundly. Yet even with my expertise, keeping my young child 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 only about children’s choices; it is about a food system that normalises and fosters unhealthy eating.

And the data reflects exactly what households such as my own are experiencing. A comprehensive population report found that 69% of children between six and 23 months ate poor dietary items, and a substantial portion were already drinking sweetened beverages.

These statistics resonate with what I see every day. Research conducted in the area where I live reported that 18.6% of schoolchildren were carrying excess weight and 7.1% were suffering from obesity, figures directly linked with the rise in processed food intake and less active lifestyles. Additional analysis showed that many youngsters of the country eat sweet snacks or manufactured savory snacks on a regular basis, and this frequent intake is linked to high levels of tooth decay.

This nation urgently needs stronger policies, better nutritional atmospheres in schools and more stringent promotion limits. Until then, families will continue fighting a daily battle against processed items – an individual snack bag at a time.

In St. Vincent: The Shift from Local Produce to Processed Meals

My position is a bit unique as I was had to evacuate from an island in our chain of islands that was ravaged by a severe cyclone last year. But it is also part of the harsh truth that is facing parents in a part of the world that is feeling the gravest consequences of global warming.

“Conditions definitely becomes more severe if a storm or volcano activity eliminates most of your vegetation.”

Prior to the storm, as a dietary educator, I was extremely troubled about the growing spread of convenience food outlets. Currently, even smaller village shops are participating in the change of a country once known for a diet of fresh regional fruits and vegetables, to one where fatty, briny, candied fast food, full of manufactured additives, is the favorite.

But the situation definitely intensifies if a hurricane or volcanic eruption destroys most of your vegetation. Unprocessed ingredients becomes rare and prohibitively costly, so it is exceptionally hard to get your kids to have a proper diet.

In spite of having a regular work I am shocked by food prices now and have often resorted to selecting from items such as legumes and pulses and meat and eggs when feeding my four children. Providing less food or reduced helpings have also become part of the post-crisis adaptation techniques.

Also it is very easy when you are juggling a stressful occupation with parenting, and scrambling in the morning, to just give the children a small amount of cash to buy snacks at school. Sadly, most campus food stalls only offer highly packaged treats and sugary sodas. The consequence of these hurdles, I fear, is an increase in the already widespread prevalence of non-communicable illnesses such as adult-onset diabetes and hypertension.

The Allure of Fast Food in Uganda

The sign of a major fried chicken chain looms large at the entrance of a shopping center in a Kampala neighbourhood, daring you to pass by without stopping at the quick service lane.

Many of the youngsters and guardians visiting the mall have never traveled past the borders of Uganda. They certainly don’t know about the bygone era of hardship that inspired the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the brand name represent all things sophisticated.

At each shopping center and every market, there is convenience meals for all budgets. 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 incentive when they get a good school report. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for festive celebrations.

“Mother, do you know that some people take 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 Friday evening, and I am only {half-listening|