Creating Healthy Food Environments for All Children
When it comes to asking for the protection of children and the guarantee of their rights to food, shelter, play, and education, you would think that the answer would be an easy ‘yes, of course, without any doubt.’
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the most ratified human rights treaty in history, is a commitment made by every country in the world, with the exception of the United States of America.
The CRC recognizes that all children until they are 18 years old are “entitled to inalienable rights- inherent to human dignity- including the right to healthy food and adequate nutrition.” (Unicef)
Despite inspiring governments to restructure laws, create policies, and put in place safeguards to protect children, millions of children continue to be denied the nutrition, education, and protection needed to help them to grow up strong and dignified.
Without ensuring access to the healthy, nutritionally balanced food needed to nourish growing bodies and minds, we as a society are not living up to our promises when it comes to protecting the rights of the child.
To co-create a reality where kids and young people have what they need to grow up, we must foster food environments that champion biodiversity, nutrition education, and agency. Advertisers must be more intentional and caring about how they market food products. We must prioritize access and affordability and shift narratives around food to those that celebrate nutrition, ancestral food knowledge, and the connection to nature that is inherent in everything we eat.
The Food Environments of the World’s Children
Around the world, children are exposed to unhealthy food environments. Food environments are the spaces in which children interact or engage with food. There are three types of food environments regularly referred to within the context of children’s rights.
External food environment: The physical, economic, sociocultural, and political context in which consumers prepare and consume food. Relates to Food availability, costs, and marketing.
Personal food environment: The household-level factors that consumers bring to food environments, including desirability, purchasing power, and convenience
Obesogenic food environments: Defined low availability, accessibility, and desirability of healthy food. Influenced by misleading and inadequate labeling that shapes unhealthy behaviors.
A common misconception is that food environments are the main responsibility of families. In reality, we all have a responsibility to change the food environments experienced by children, despite our individual experiences and backgrounds. Marketers, advertisers, chefs, food service, schools, governments, consumers, and farmers all play an active role in ensuring that every child, despite their home realities, can build healthy and sustainable relationships with the food needed to nourish them holistically.
Food Marketing as a threat to Children’s Rights
Children, as a demographic, are a particularly vulnerable group when it comes to exploitation and commercialization. Kids are the primary audience for advertising food products that are not conducive to health and well-being. These ad strategies focus on emotion-based persuasion and capitalizing on what is referred to as “pester power.”
What do we mean by that? Well, if you are a parent or remember your childhood well, it probably goes without saying, but you have experienced it quite a few times. Pester power is a manifestation of the shouting and the deep emotional expression of want that you experience while walking through the aisles of the market. It is the powerless feeling you experience when your child picks up a colorful and dreamlike packaging of sugar-loaded snacks screaming ‘but I want these snacks, and I want them now!”
These exploitative market practices are intentional, and they often can cause long-term harm. What happens if people create positive brand associations with unhealthy food and this can not only impact them for the longterm, but can even change social norms among consumers as they grow into adulthood.
It is up to the governments and major corporations to ensure that protections are in place from the harm caused by inappropriate marketing and advertising.
The Triple Burden of Malnutrition
According to the State of the World’s Children 2019, 2 in 3 children between 6 and 23 months do not receive the nutritionally balanced and diverse diet needed to thrive in early childhood.
In many places around the world, within households, three forms of malnutrition coexist. Many countries face the challenge of malnutrition, hidden hunger, and obesity. This means that children often eat too little of what they need to grow up strong and healthy and too much of what is not good for their bodies. This phenomena, referred to as the triple burden of malnutrition is a growing problem around the world that is threatening the overall health and well-being of children, families, communities, and society.
Putting Children at the center of efforts for food systems transformation
Many negative consequences of unhealthy food environments do not begin impacting children until they are grown, making it even more important that we take collective prevention.
The time is now to act as a combination of rising food costs, conflict, inequality, climate change, and COVID-19 are combining to put added pressure on food systems and the well-being of children, especially those in the most marginalized communities.
Children, young people, and their futures should be put at the center of efforts for positive food systems transformation. By joining forces, sharing experiences across civil society, government, and the private sector, and committing to putting children first, we can live up to the promise made by nearly every country in the world in the CRC and guarantee a healthy future for all.