How cheap junk food and a R560 grant are fuelling stunting and child obesity

Obesity and overweight rates in young children have almost doubled since 2016 in South Africa.

In his State of the Nation Address this year, president Cyril Ramaphosa vowed to eradicate child stunting by 2030 when he said “This year, we will embark on a mission to end child stunting by 2030 and tackle malnutrition among young children, in line with the National Strategy to Accelerate Action for Children.”

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The Children’s Institute, a child-centred research unit at the University of Cape Town focused on enabling all children to thrive and reduce obesity and overweight rates in young children (children under the age of five years old) is calling for more urgent action, stressing that there has been an increase from 13% to 22.3% from 2016 to 2023. Also nearly one in four young children are obese and overweight.

At the same time, more than one in four young children are stunted, and stunting rates have remained “stubbornly high”, Children’s Institute’s communications and education specialist Lori Lake told Daily Maverick.

While child stunting restricts a child’s growth and their brain development, both stunting and obesity and overweight increase the risk of developing non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, later in life.

Stunting, and obesity and overweight, are not mutually exclusive problems, according to Lake. Overweight and stunting occur in the same household or in the same individual. A child may start off being stunted in their early years, but can become overweight and obese later in life.

Lake argued that SA must take action in ways that address both issues.

“It is... vital to ensure that we adopt double-duty actions that address both the longstanding burden of stunting and the rapid rise in overweight and obesity,” she said.

Sketching the big picture

The Children’s Institute made a submission to the South African Human Rights Commission’s inquiry into SA’s food systems in February 2026. The submission was intended to “sketch the big picture” of child malnutrition in SA, illustrate the dual burden of both undernutrition (such as stunting) and overnutrition (obesity and overweight), and illustrate child malnutrition as a complex problem to the commission, said Lake.

Major drivers of child malnutrition are poverty, food insecurity and unemployment. Statistics SA records that in the last quarter of 2025 the unemployment rate was at 31.4%, and has risen to 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026.

According to FoodForward SA and the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit’s 2026 The State of Household Food Insecurity in SA report, approximately 45% of households experienced moderate food insecurity in 2025. Moderate food insecurity is when households compromise on food quality and variety and begin to reduce food quantities, including skipping meals. And approximately 25% of households experienced severe food insecurity, which is measured by extreme deprivation, including hunger, going without food, and in some cases not eating for an entire day. These figures are based on a study sample size of 796 South African households.

Research by the Children’s Institute shows that in 2024, 38% of all children in South Africa fell below the food poverty line, which amounted to about eight million children. The national Food Poverty Line represents the minimum income required for daily energy needs, which is R855 per person per month as of May 2025.

Children living in households below or close to the Food Poverty Line are likely to suffer from malnutrition. Caregivers living on an income below this level do not have enough money to purchase the food needed to ensure a nutritious and diverse diet for themselves or their children. They have to rely on food that is cheap, high in starch and fills the stomach, but is very low on the nutrients needed for optimal growth and development and is likely to contribute to stunting and obesity.

A concern of the Children’s Institute was the gap between the Child Support Grant and Food Poverty Line. The grant amount, R560 per month, is no longer enough to meet children’s dietary needs.

Children with inadequate access to water and sanitation are more at risk of developing diarrhoeal disease or respiratory tract infections, which compromise the child’s nutritional status. Malnutrition is also linked to access to health care facilities. The Children’s Institute records that in 2024, 27% of children did not have access to safe drinking water and 21% did not have basic sanitation in their households.

And one in five children had to travel more than 30 minutes to access health care services, which delays access to treatment in emergency situations and makes it difficult for families to maintain primary preventive mother and baby visits, where the growth of the baby would be monitored and healthcare workers could respond to the first signs that a child is not growing well.

The healthcare system also lacks guidance for caregivers and breastfeeding mothers, according to Lake. She argued that the healthcare system should guide them on how to introduce solid or complementary foods to babies as well to ensure that they have as diverse a diet as possible.

Part of SA’s malnutrition problem was how multinational companies had flooded local markets with foods high in fat, sugar and salt, but low in nutrients. Many children lived in “food deserts” where healthy foods were unavailable or unaffordable, and were thus forced to eat these unhealthy foods, Lake said.

Interventions to fight malnutrition

The Children’s Institute has provided several actions to fight child malnutrition. Firstly, the value of the Child Support Grant must increase, so that it at least meets the Food Poverty Line, said Lake.

And the government should implement a maternal support grant. This grant would provide an income of the same value as the Child Support Grant to women in their third trimester of pregnancy until three months after birth, says Deputy Executive Director of Grow Great, Nicola Stofberg, who is also a member of the Maternal Support Grant Coalition. Grow Great is an initiative of the DG Murray Trust, which focuses on maternal and child health, nutrition and early childhood development practices in the first 1,000 days of life. The Maternal Support Grant Coalition is a collective of civil society organisations, researchers and academics calling for the grant.

According to Stofberg, the grant would be beneficial for the health and mental health of pregnant women and the health of their babies, such as preventing low birth weight and stunting. But the grant would also provide a safety net for the transition between birth and claiming a Child Support Grant, which often does not happen until the child is one year old.

The food industry must be regulated by increasing sugar taxes to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, clearly labelling foods that are high in salt, sugar and fat, and ensuring that these foods are not marketed to children, Lake said.

Breastfeeding provided optimal nutrition and boosted children’s immunity and protected children from both stunting and obesity. Yet caregivers’ confidence and breastfeeding practices were undermined by the aggressive marketing of commercial milk formula. Therefore, greater efforts were needed to promote and support optimal infant and young child feeding practices, as this was when children were most vulnerable to stunting and malnutrition, Lake argued. At the same time, regulations on commercial pressures to use formula should be strengthened.

Lake hoped that several of the interventions the Children’s Institute was calling for would be implemented as part of Ramaphosa’s commitment to end stunting and malnutrition.

She hoped to see support of breastfeeding and complementary feeding guidance, increasing the child support grant, implementing the Maternal Support Grant, an increase in the sugar tax rate and implementing Draft Regulation R3337, which would require clearer food labelling, she said.

Further, Lake was eager to learn who was on the presidential task team on stunting, what was on their agenda and in which ways it was being supported and funded. DM