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This menace of highly processed food items is a worldwide phenomenon. While their consumption is particularly high in developed countries, constituting the majority of the usual nourishment in the UK and the US, for example, UPFs are replacing whole foods in diets on each part of the world.

This month, a comprehensive global study on the health threats of UPFs was published. It warned that such foods are leaving millions of people to long-term harm, and urged swift intervention. In a prior announcement, an international child welfare organization revealed that a greater number of youngsters around the world were suffering from obesity than too thin for the first time, as junk food dominates diets, with the sharpest climbs in developing nations.

Carlos Monteiro, an academic specializing in dietary health at the a prominent Brazilian university, and one of the study's contributors, says that businesses motivated by financial gain, not personal decisions, are propelling the transformation in dietary behavior.

For parents, it can appear that the entire food system is opposing them. “At times it feels like we have zero control over what we are placing onto our kid’s plate,” says one mother from India. We spoke to her and four other parents from internationally on the increasing difficulties and annoyances of providing a nutritious food regimen in the time of manufactured foods.

The Situation in Nepal: A Constant Craving for Sweets

Nurturing a child in this South Asian country today often feels like trying to swim against the current, especially when it comes to food. I make food at home as much as I can, but the second my daughter steps outside, she is surrounded by colorfully presented snacks and sugar-laden liquids. She constantly craves cookies, chocolates and packaged fruit juices – products intensively promoted to children. A single pizza commercial on TV is sufficient for her to ask, “Can we have pizza today?”

Even the educational setting reinforces unhealthy habits. Her cafeteria serves flavored drink every Tuesday, which she anxiously anticipates. She is given a packet of six cookies from a friend on the school bus and chocolates on birthdays, and encounters a snack bar right outside her school gate.

On certain occasions it feels like the whole nutritional ecosystem is opposing parents who are just striving to raise well-nourished kids.

As someone working in the Nepal Non-Communicable Disease Alliance and leading a project called Advocating for Better School Diets, I understand this issue profoundly. Yet even with my expertise, keeping my eight-year-old daughter healthy is exceptionally hard.

These repeated exposures at school, in transit and online make it almost unfeasible for parents to limit ultra-processed foods. It is not only about what kids pick; it is about a nutritional framework that normalises and promotes unhealthy eating.

And the data shows clearly what families like mine are going through. A recent national survey found that a significant majority of children between six and 23 months ate junk food, and nearly half were already drinking sugary drinks.

These figures resonate with what I see every day. A study conducted in the district where I live reported that a notable percentage of schoolchildren were overweight and 7.1% were clinically overweight, figures directly linked with the rise in unhealthy snacking and increasingly inactive lifestyles. Further research showed that many kids in Nepal eat candy or salty packaged items almost daily, and this habitual eating is linked to high levels of tooth decay.

Nepal urgently needs more robust regulations, healthier school environments and more stringent promotion limits. Until then, families will continue waging a constant war against processed items – an individual snack bag at a time.

St Vincent and the Grenadines: ‘Greasy, Salty, Sugary Fast Food is the Preference’

My position is a bit particular as I was compelled to move from an island in our group of isles that was devastated by a major hurricane last year. But it is also part of the stark reality that is affecting parents in a region that is enduring the most severe impacts of global warming.

“The circumstances definitely becomes more severe if a cyclone or volcanic eruption eliminates most of your crops.”

Even before the storm, as a nutrition instructor, I was very worried about the increasing proliferation of fast food restaurants. Currently, even local corner stores are participating in the shift of a country once defined by a diet of nutritious home-produced fruits and vegetables, to one where greasy, salty, sugary fast food, packed with manufactured additives, is the preference.

But the condition definitely intensifies if a severe weather event or mountain activity destroys most of your crops. Nutritious whole foods becomes hard to find and extremely pricey, so it is exceptionally hard to get your kids to consume healthy meals.

Regardless of having a regular work I am shocked by food prices now and have often resorted to picking one of items such as vegetables and meat and eggs when feeding my four children. Offering reduced portions or diminished quantities have also become part of the recovery survival methods.

Also it is very easy when you are juggling a stressful occupation with parenting, and scrambling in the morning, to just give the children a couple of coins to buy snacks at school. Regrettably, most school tuck shops only offer ultra-processed snacks and sugary sodas. The outcome of these challenges, I fear, is an rise in the already epidemic rates of chronic conditions such as blood sugar disorders and hypertension.

Uganda: ‘It’s in Every Mall and Every Market’

The symbol of a global fast-food brand looms large at the entrance of a mall in a urban area, daring you to pass by without stopping at the quick service lane.

Many of the children and parents visiting the mall have never ventured outside the borders of this East African nation. They certainly don’t know about the historical economic crisis that led the founder to start one of the first global eatery brands. All they know is that the brand name represent all things modern.

In every mall and every market, there is convenience meals for all budgets. As one of the costlier choices, the fried chicken chain is considered a treat. It is the place local households go to observe birthdays and baptisms. It is the children’s prize when they get a good school report. In fact, they are hoping their parents take them there for Christmas.

“Mother, do you know that some people bring fast food for school lunch,” my 14-year-old daughter, who attends a school in the area, tells me. She says that on the days they do not pack that, they pack food from a regional restaurant brand selling everything from morning meals to burgers.

It is the end of the week, and I am only {half-listening|