HUMANITARIAN agency United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in raising alarm that the global prevalence of obesity among school-age children and adolescents is more than that for those underweight for the first time in 2025, is calling for “urgent action…to halt this upward trend”.

In its latest Child Nutrition report titled Feeding profit: How food systems are failing children, the organisation said, “This dramatic shift in the face of malnutrition jeopardises the health and future potential of children, communities and nations.”

In pointing out that the world has reached, “a historic tipping point around obesity”, UNICEF said: “With obesity projected to rise among school-age children and adolescents between 2025 and 2030, both globally and across all regions except for North America and Western Europe, urgent action is needed to halt this upward trend.”

UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell, in the report’s foreword, said the research, “reveals how unhealthy food environments are driving the worldwide surge in children living with overweight and obesity”.

“It describes how these environments expose children and adolescents to a constant supply of cheap, ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks, while failing to make nutritious options available and affordable to families,” she said, noting that, “policies such as targeted subsidies on healthy food, mandatory large-scale fortification of appropriate foods and social transfers to address income poverty are needed to increase the availability and affordability of nutritious foods for children”.

According to the report, globally, one in 20 children under five years of age (five per cent) and one in five children and adolescents ages 5–19 years (20 per cent) are overweight. This amounts to a staggering 35 million children under five years of age, 391 million children and adolescents ages 5–19 years, and 427 million children and adolescents in total.

In the meantime, it said children and adolescents are affected by overweight and obesity in all regions of the world, though not equally. According to UNICEF, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America rank in the top three regions for the prevalence of overweight across all age groups.

“However, the burden [that is numbers of children and adolescents affected] is concentrated in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. These three regions account for more than half of all children and adolescents aged 0–19 years who are living with overweight globally [241 million out of 427 million],” it stated.

UNICEF also said, globally and across regions, “overweight is more common in boys than in girls across all age groups, except among adolescents aged 15–19 years, where the prevalence is higher in girls”.

According to the entity, in East Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, the prevalence of overweight among boys ages 5–9 and/or 10–14 years exceeds that of girls by more than five percentage points. It said in Eastern and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and West and Central Africa, the prevalence of overweight among adolescent girls ages 15–19 years exceeds that of boys by around five percentage points.

“The high percentage of children aged 5–9 years affected by obesity is particularly concerning. In 2022, almost half of all children aged 5–9 years affected by overweight were classified as living with obesity [48 per cent or 70 million out of 147 million].

“The earlier obesity begins in childhood, the longer the child is exposed to serious health risks, and the greater the likelihood that these risks will persist into adulthood. Only one per cent of children aged less than five years are living with obesity globally. Obesity in children aged less than five years is defined using a different indicator and different threshold than in children and adolescents aged 5–19 years and, therefore, the data are not comparable,” said UNICEF.

In the meantime, the humanitarian agency made eight recommendations requiring actions across the food, health, water and sanitation, education and social protection systems to stem the tide. In this respect it has called for the implementation of: The International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions to protect and promote breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding; comprehensive, mandatory measures to transform food environments for children and adolescents; comprehensive policies to improve the availability and affordability of locally produced nutritious foods for children and adolescents; the establishment of robust safeguards to protect public policy processes from interference by the ultra-processed food industry; and the implementation of social and behaviour change initiatives that empower families and communities to claim their right to healthy food environments. It has also recommended the strengthening of social protection programmes to address income poverty and increase children’s access to nutritious and healthy diets; the engagement of young people in public policymaking on food justice by fostering youth-led advocacy and the strengthening of global and national data and surveillance systems to monitor food environments, diets and overweight among children and adolescents using standardised indicators and data collection methods.

Said UNICEF: “Governments bear the primary responsibility for protecting children’s right to food and nutrition; however, achieving swift, impactful change towards healthier food environments demands unified action from multiple stakeholders. All parties must urgently commit to a bold, comprehensive response — holding themselves and one another accountable for transparent decision-making and measurable progress to create equitable, healthy food environments for all children and adolescents, everywhere.”

It also further called on governments to, “enact, implement, monitor and enforce a comprehensive set of mandatory legal measures and policies to protect children and adolescents from unhealthy foods and beverages, including ultra-processed foods and beverages, and improve equitable access to nutritious and healthy foods”.

It said states must also, “enact, implement, monitor and enforce legal frameworks to prevent interference by the ultra-processed food and beverage industry in public policy processes, including conflict-of-interest safeguards, mandatory transparency measures and restrictions on lobbying and influence, [and] strengthen[ing of] national monitoring and accountability systems through regular data collection on children’s diets and nutrition, the implementation of legal measures and policies, and industry practices impacting children’s food environments”.