By Princess-Ekwi Ajide, Abuja
In a bid to end incidence of overweight in children and adolescents aged 5-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have released a new toolkit to help countries protect children from harmful food marketing.
The release of the toolkit which provides policy makers and public health professionals with guidance on how to create effective policies to prevent the promotion of unhealthy and junk food to children, comes at a time when the prevalence of child obesity is on the increase.
This is according to a report jointly released by the organisations tagged “Ending the Marketing of Unhealthy Foods to Children.”
The toolkit aims to address the issue of obesity which WHO had reported, that over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016 by providing evidence-based recommendations for countries to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food to children.
According to the Director-General of WHO, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, the marketing of unhealthy food to children is a major contributor to the epidemic of obesity and related diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
According to the statement, the toolkit supports governments to take action using a child rights perspective and complements WHO’s recent Guideline on Policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing and UNICEF’s A child rights-based approach to food marketing: a guide for policymakers.
It notes, despite political commitments and the recognition that food marketing can violate children’s rights, evidence continues to show that children of all ages remain exposed to the aggressive marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages high in unhealthy fats, free sugars and/or salt.
The statement added that as food marketing proliferates globally, and increasing numbers of children becoming overweight, with obesity continuing to rise, the time for action is now.
