‘Ultra-processed’ foods, malnutrition threaten health of Filipino kids —UNICEF

Many Filipino children are suffering from malnutrition due to failing food systems, according to United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

In its recently released flagship report “The State of the World’s Children: Children, Food, and Nutrition,” the UN body bared that one in every three Filipinos under five years old are stunted or too short for their age.

On the other hand, seven percent of Filipino kids are suffering from wasting— meaning they are too thin for their height.

One in every 10 adolescents in the country are now overweight, the UNICEF also found out.

Worldwide trends show that common children’s diet include more food that are “ultra-processed,” high in sugar, sodium, and fat.

The lack of healthy food options, poverty, and degradation of the environment are seen as drivers of negative changes in the status of children’s nutrition worldwide.

The National Nutrition Council (NNC) said it is exhausting all efforts to address this public health issue in the country through the framework Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition (PPAN) 2017-2022.

“One of the strategic thrusts of the PPAN 2017-2022 is the focus on the first 1,000 days of life, which refers to the period of pregnancy up to the first two years of the child,” said NNC Executive Director Dr. Azucena Dayanghirang.

“This is a window of golden opportunity wherein key health, nutrition, early education and related services should be delivered to ensure optimum physical and mental development of a child,” she added.

Triple burden

According to the UNICEF report, communities worldwide face three strands of malnutrition:

• Undernutrition, which manifests through stunting and wasting among children. UNICEF said that around 149 million kids under five years old are too short for their age while 50 million are too thin for their height.
   
• Hidden hunger or micronutrient deficiency, which reduces the children's ability to learn and increases the mortality rate among women during or shortly after childbirth. The UN agency pegged the number of kids suffering from hidden hunger at 340 million.
   
• Being overweight, which may lead to early onset of type-2 diabetes, stigmatization, and depression among children.

"The greatest burden of all forms of malnutrition is shouldered by children and young people from the poorest and most marginalized communities, perpetuating poverty across generations," the report noted.

Healthy choices

Experts say that one powerful solution to malnutrition is to empower the young people to demand and access healthy food.

"In cities, many poor children live in 'food deserts,' facing an absence of healthy food options, or in 'food swamps', confronted with an abundance of high-calorie, low-nutrient, processed foods," the UNICEF said.

Its report revealed that 42 percent of school-going adolescents worldwide drink carbonated soft drinks at least once a day and 46 percent eat fast food at least once a week.

UNICEF urged the government and all the stakeholders to create better food systems by promoting healthy diets, regulating advertisements of unhealthy foods and beverages, and fortifying complementary and staple foods with micronutrients, among other action points.

"National food systems must put children's nutrition at the heart of their work because their nutritional needs are unique and meeting them is critical for sustainable development," it said. —MDM/JST, GMA News