Children’s obesity is now common than malnutrition – what do we do?

For the first time, more children all over the world are living with obesity than malnutrition. The shift indicates malnutrition from childhood has entered a new phase, one that the world is poorly equipped to address. While there are proved strategies for the reduction of hunger, there are few to tackle obesity.

“Despite many years of efforts to really prevent obesity, especially among children and adolescents, it is clear that we are not doing it big of a job,” says Andrea Richardson at RAND, a non-profit research organization in California.

In a new report, Harriet Torlesse at UNICEF in Belgium and her colleagues Analysis of Nutrition Status for Children between the ages of 5 and 19 using data from non-infectious collaboration factor cooperation. This collaborative database spans more than 160 countries and territories representing more than 90 percent of children worldwide.

The report revealed that the obesity of global childhood in the obesity of global childhood is grossly tripled. About 9.4 per Children today live evil compared to 9.2 per Like, there is unnoused – the first time that obesity surpasses malnutrition among children.

The shift is largely run by rising obesity speeds in low and middle -income countries, where “more than 80 percent of children living with overweight and obesity in the world are,” says Torlesse. “It’s not a long time for high -income problems. It’s very much a problem globally.”

The involvement is that governments and other organizations must consider their approach to malnutrition from childhood. “You don’t just look at malnutrition, you look at malnutrition in all its forms,” ​​says Shibani Ghosh at Cornell University in New York State. The problem is that we do not have an effective playbook to combat obesity that we do for hunger.

The UNICEF report is accusing increasing obesity in children on the spread of ultra-processed foods. These products made with industrialized processes, additive and precaver contain. They also tend to be very fat, sugar and salt – think packed cookies, sweets, chips and sodas. According to the report, ultra-procedure food accounts for at least half of the calories consumed by children in Australia, Canada, Britain, and about a third of the third consumed by children in some low and middle-income countries, including Argentina and Mexico.

Numerous studies have associated with ultra-procedure foods with an increased risk of obesity. Still, policies are designed to reduce the consumption of them – many of which recommend that UNICEF – rarely makes a tooth in obesity rats.

Abolished taxes on unhealthy foods. In 2014, Mexico became the first country to tax certain foods with high calorie and sugar-sweetened beverages. Sales of these products subsequently fell, especially among households with lower income, but the teens’ obesity interest rates hardly budgets. In fact, they only died in teenage girls, as was the case in the UK after implementing a tax on sugary drinks in 2018.

Meanwhile, Chile has some of the most Sufing rules on ultra-processed foods. In 2016, it limited the marketing of these foods and drinks and required the high calories, sodium, saturated fat and sugar to the package to the package to deter consumers. Obesity speeds in children aged 4 to 6 subsequently fell 1 to 3 percentage points a year later – but returned to baseline in 2018. In fact, obesity in 2019 had increased by 2 percentage points in those who were 14 years old, which emphasized how little effect these policies had.

But Torlesse sees it differently. “There is no single intervention that will do well,” she says. “So you see a country making a soda, or a country taking food labels. It’s all admirable, but unless you take it from all sides, we don’t go to get the shift we need.”

Therefore, the report also calls on the police that there is an affordable price and affordable prices for nutritious foods, such as replacement or school lunch programs. It emphasizes the importance of nutrition education and also relieves Povety. “The same reasons why we see people suffering from malnutrition are very much the same reasons why we see people suffering from superstruation,” says Richardson. “It is really rooted in a lack of financial resources that live in imported areas, poor access to nutritious foods and safe drinking water.”

No country has implemented all UNICEF’s recommendations, so it is still an open question that they will be enough to reining in obesity. “The implicit change is that because there is an increasing consumption of unhealthy foods, obese and obesity rats are enteries,” says Ghosh. “And that could be part of the explanation.”

But there are probably additional drivers, such as stress, pollution and even genetic changes.

“We really have to see this as a holistically greater emergency in public health,” says Richardson. “For children is our future. They should all be healthy. If our children do not thrive, our future charges do not look very bright.”