More Children Obese Than Underweight In World Now As Junk Replaces Food

ETVBHARAT

Obesity has skyrocketed among children and adolescents, with 188 million worldwide aged 5 to 19 obese as ultra-processed food increasingly replaces fruits, vegetables and protein.

Transcript

00:00I think the most startling finding is really that obesity has overtaken underweight as the

00:09predominant form of malnutrition in children aged 5 to 19 around the world for the first time. So it

00:16is quite staggering. It's 1 in 10 children are living with obesity, 1 in 5 children are living

00:21with overweight right now. So in terms of numbers, the amount of children that are affected by

00:27obesity around the world is 188 million children. So those numbers are quite staggering. Really all

00:34regions are affected. We still do see the highest numbers in North America, in Latin America and the

00:40Caribbean, and in the Middle East and North Africa. But the sharpest increases are actually in other

00:46regions that traditionally have lower numbers. So this is happening in every region around the world.

00:52Often these foods are much cheaper than healthy foods and so families are having to make really

00:58difficult choices to feed these foods. So it's certainly not because children or families are

01:03suddenly making poor decisions about their health. It is driven by harmful corporate practices and the

01:11toxic food environments that have resulted from those. The most important thing is that governments

01:16really have to pass mandatory laws to regulate both the products and the company practices.

01:23So this includes a range of measures from front of pack nutrition labeling to marketing restrictions,

01:28taxation on sugar sweetened beverages and really improving school food environments. But really it

01:34takes political will. Governments must be willing to protect children in their population from these

01:42industry practices and stand up to these industries and push back. But what we also see in humanitarian

01:48settings and conflict zones is once again these large food and beverage companies taking advantage of

01:55those and donating large quantities of junk food of ultra processed foods in order to promote their own image

02:04and for their own marketing tactics. So once again we're having children that on the one hand don't have

02:10access to food but the only food they are getting is this very unhealthy food because of these really

02:17predatory tactics from the industry.

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