Feeding profit: New UNICEF Report exposes how food environments are failing children
A new Child Nutrition Report 2025 from UNICEF, Feeding Profit: How Food Environments are Failing Children, lays bare the growing impact of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) on children’s health worldwide – and the urgent need for systemic action.
The report shows that for the first time in history, more school-age children and adolescents are living with obesity than are underweight.
Globally, one in five children aged 5–19 (391 million) live with overweight, and 163 million live with obesity. Among children under five, 25.5 million (5.5%) already live with overweight.
The findings highlight particularly steep rises in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which now account for 81% of the global burden. In these regions, traditional diets are rapidly being displaced by cheap, heavily marketed UPFs that dominate shops, schools, and digital spaces.
The report also underlines the consequences of inaction: overweight and obesity are driving higher risks of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers, alongside mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression. Families bear increasing financial and emotional strain, while global economies face mounting productivity losses – with the economic cost of obesity projected to surpass US$4 trillion annually by 2035.
UNICEF stresses that these outcomes are not inevitable.
Food environments are being shaped by the unethical practices of the UPF industry, which exploits gaps in regulation, infiltrates schools, and targets children through relentless digital marketing. Governments, it argues, must step up with comprehensive, mandatory policies – including:
- Restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages.
- Stronger school food standards.
- Front-of-pack labelling and fiscal measures such as SSB taxes.
- Subsidies and incentives for nutritious, locally produced foods.
- Robust safeguards against industry interference in policymaking.
The report concludes with eight key recommendations, ranging from empowering young people to demand healthier environments, to integrating nutrition into social protection programmes, and strengthening monitoring systems.
As UNICEF’s Executive, Director Catherine Russell, warns: “Children depend on good nutrition to develop their minds and bodies. They are the hardest hit when it comes to the impact of unhealthy food – but it does not have to be this way.”
The message is clear: transforming children’s food environments is not just about diet, it’s about safeguarding health, equality, and future prosperity.
By 2035, nearly half of humanity - 4 billion people - will live with overweight or obesity. If we fail to act, we risk leaving half the world, including millions of children, behind.
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You can read the full report 'Feeding Profit: How Food Environments are Failing Children' here.
Full Report