How Big Food’s corporate ambition is driving child overweight around the world

For the first time in recorded history, obesity has overtaken underweight as the main form of malnutrition among children and adolescents. The global prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents is now 9.4%, compared with 9.2% for underweight.

The United Nations agency for children, Unicef, published its annual child nutrition report in September 2025, revealing the stark reality of the changing face of malnutrition everywhere — and pointing the finger squarely at the ultra-processed food and beverage industry for strategically driving this shift. The report’s analysis draws on data from 190 countries and exhaustive global research by Unicef, the World Health Organization, and nutrition experts around the world.

The report, titled “Feeding Profit: How Food Environments are Failing Children”, has earned plaudit in the nutrition and health policy world for its clear-eyed focus on the pernicious influence of transnational food corporations on the eating habits of children around the world — with particularly dramatic effects on children in low- and middle-income countries. These corporations — the likes of Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Unilever, PepsiCo, Mondelez, McDonalds and Kellogg’s — are intensifying their sales and marketing in low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa, because they tend to offer them the greatest growth potential. 

This is because these countries tend to be under- or poorly regulated on food-related issues, enabling the ultra-processed food and beverage companies to take advantage of this regulatory vulnerability to sell their cheap, unhealthy products relatively easily. (It is increasingly difficult to market unhealthy products in more strictly regulated, higher-income countries.)  

“What was once a locally supplied sector of family and community-run shops, markets and street vendors is increasingly being displaced by modern convenience stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, fast food chains and online food platforms, fed by global supply chains.”

A Unicef analysis “has raised serious concerns about the growing influence of multinational food and beverage companies in public schools in South Africa through their partnerships with the Department of Basic Education”. 

Obesity now exceeds underweight in all regions of the world except for Sub-Saharan Africa — globally 188 million children have overweight or obesity, or one in 10. The percentage of children under five with overweight rose from 13% to 23% from 2016 to 2024. Among children aged five to 19, rates of overweight went from 9% to 21% from 2000 to 2022, while rates of underweight among children dropped from 12% to 3% over the same period. 

In South Africa, one in eight children were overweight, rates that “represent a significant public health challenge”, Unicef South Africa’s Gilbert Tshitaudzi said. At the same time, one in four children were stunted — a new high of 28.8%, upending the global trend of lower rates of stunting.

“It’s really tough trying to tackle both undernutrition and obesity at the same time,” Nomathemba Chandiwana, chief scientific officer at the Desmond Tutu Foundation, told The Guardian, explaining that in South Africa, people often think of “malnutrition” as underweight or stunting, but not overweight. “Most of the attention and resources go to undernutrition and stunting in the early years, which of course matters, but obesity isn’t always seen as malnutrition, so it slips under the radar,” she said.

Unhealthy diets increase the risk of overweight, obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases among children and adolescents, including high blood pressure, high blood glucose and high blood lipid levels. These can persist into adulthood and progress to Type 2 diabetes and other non-communicable diseases, responsible for South Africa’s shocking drop in life expectancy as reported on 12 October 2025 in The Lancet Global Burden of Disease study. 

Global picture of childhood obesity

The report says childhood obesity is highest in some Pacific Island countries, as well as in high-income countries, notably the United States (21%), the United Arab Emirates (21%) and Chile (27%). 

The sharpest rise in the numbers of overweight children, however, is in low- and middle-income countries, like South Africa, with “transformed” retail environments and ultra-processed foods that are cheaper than nutritious foods driving the more-than-doubling of these numbers since 2000. Young children are highly susceptible to appealing packaging and marketing, and parents feel powerless and overwhelmed, the report describes, when faced with difficult choices while shopping for food.

South Africa is failing to protect its children from unhealthy foods

Unicef’s report also singles out South Africa for allowing “corporate capture” of public schools, with at least four memorandums of understanding between the Department of Basic Education and global ultra-processed food brands not just permitting, but encouraging, unhealthy foods to be sold and marketed in schools under the guise of nutrition or educational support.

Commenting on the report overall, Dr Tamryn Frank, a nutrition researcher at the University of the Western Cape’s School of Public Health, told Daily Maverick: “This alarming report comes at an important time, as rates of obesity and non-communicable disease are rising rapidly in Africa, driven by the proliferation of easy-to-access, cheap and affordable ultra-processed foods. The unregulated for-profit trans-national ultra-processed product industry is a key contributor to this, and better regulation of this industry is urgently needed.”

Professor Scott Drimie, from the Department of Global Health, Faculty of Health and Medicine Sciences at Stellenbosch University, told Daily Maverick that “government could do much more about the infiltration of ultra-processed foods into our society”, agreeing that gazetting R3337 (draft labelling regulations) and strengthening the Health Promotion Levy would be a start. 

“Banning ultra-processed foods from school tuck shops would do much to curb the undermining of the National School Nutrition Programme,” Drimie said. 

Unhealthy food environments

In most countries’ food environments, ultra-processed foods now often displace nutritious foods for children. 

Though wealthier countries predictably have the highest average ultra-processed food intake among children, many lower and lower-middle income countries, such as Kenya, Lebanon and Nepal, are fast catching up: a high percentage of young children are consuming sweet, salty and fried foods, but few are eating nutritious foods such as vegetables, fruits, eggs and fish, poultry or meat, which are necessary to fuel their healthy development. 

“This dietary imbalance increases the risk of the triple burden of child malnutrition — stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight,” the report says, “three forms of malnutrition that sometimes coexist in the same country, community, household and even individual.” 

Unicef’s report describes four main causes shaping unhealthy food environments. 

First, ultra-processed foods and drinks “are flooding retail markets and infiltrating schools”. Industrially produced salty and sweet snacks “increasingly dominate food retail environments” especially in poorer neighbourhoods, where fresh, nutritious foods are often unavailable or unaffordable. Crucially, schools are not protecting children from unhealthy foods and drinks, including those that are ultra-processed.

The report gives an example from Zimbabwe, where in just three years (2021 to 2024), retail sales of ultra-processed foods, sugary beverages, and fast foods increased by more than 30%, and more than four-fifths (82%) of packaged foods are ultra-processed. (In South Africa, DM has reported that 80% of foods in supermarkets are ultra-processed.)

Second, children are involuntarily exposed to the marketing of ultra-processed foods and drinks in all areas of their lives — at home, at school and at play. Digital marketing has intensified these exposures, with children, adolescents and young people experiencing “temptation, pressure and powerlessness in the face of relentless marketing by the ultra-processed food and beverage industry”.

For older children, marketing targets their sensitivities to social pressures and develops long-term brand loyalty. Lulutho, a 19-year-old South African, told the Unicef team: “There’s this delivery app we have here, and they’re always sending me notifications about deals and discounts.” 

The report describes “the unprecedented power” that digital marketing gives to the ultra-processed product industry. 

“That’s what a lot of junk food marketing has tapped into,” Lulutho said. “They encapsulate an experience and an emotion around specific products. It really grows a culture around it, and it makes you want to buy into that culture.”

Third, the “unethical practices” of the ultra-processed food and beverage industry “undermine government action and exploit children, even in times of crisis”, and fourth, inadequate legal measures and policies enable the ultra-processed food and beverage industry “to manipulate children’s food environments”. 

Parents, in the meantime, feel “overwhelmed and powerless to counteract the constant influence of this marketing on their children and to resist their purchase requests”, and are also exploited by absent or weak food regulations, such as false nutrition or health claims on packaged products or in their advertising.

Unicef’s studies of food labels for “complementary foods” (formula milks or “baby foods” for infants and toddlers) found that “almost all” products they sampled (97%) in four countries in Eastern and southern Africa carried “inappropriate nutrition and health claims”.  

How can unhealthy food environments be fixed?

The report urges governments to implement mandatory policies to protect children and adolescents from unhealthy foods and beverages (such as labelling, marketing restrictions, and taxes) and — critically — to monitor and enforce those measures. It also calls on governments to improve access to healthy foods, with subsidies, and for “strong safeguards to protect public-policy processes from interference by the ultra-processed food industry”.

South Africa’s National Department of Health has been sitting for two years on draft legislation that health activists and experts say is critically needed to protect consumers from exactly this type of exploitative marketing. Dr Tamryn Frank told DM by email that “the finalisation of the Draft R3337 Regulation that proposes warning labels on packaged products high in saturated fat, sugar or salt, or containing non-sugar sweetener, and prohibits marketing of these products could go a long way to supporting a healthier food environment.” 

Frank, whose team was involved in collecting the data from Tanzania and Zimbabwe that informed Unicef’s report, emphasised the necessity for government to play a stronger regulatory role: “Additional policy actions, such as extending the Health Promotion Levy (sugary beverage tax) to products that will carry warning labels, and restricting these products from schools, should be considered. Of course, alongside this, policies that make healthy foods affordable, and accessible, such as subsidising the cost of healthy foods for the most vulnerable, need to be considered too.”

Stellenbosch’s Drimie underscored this: “Most critically, the government must acknowledge that treating this as merely a health issue is insufficient,” he said. “Framing this as a children’s rights issue demands cross-departmental action between Health, Basic Education, Social Development, Trade and Industry, and Agriculture. It reiterates that South Africa needs a comprehensive Food and Nutrition Security Policy that explicitly protects children from predatory marketing and ensures access to nutritious foods, particularly in communities where the ultra-processed food industry has strategically positioned itself as the affordable option.” DM

Adèle Sulcas is a senior adviser to Daily Maverick’s Food Justice project. She writes  about food systems and global health policy.