Nepalese schoolgirl Prasiddhika Shrestha is holding up a video camera at her aunt’s house, filming her cousins as they devour crisps, corn puffs, soda and dalmoth, a traditional lentil-based snack.
“What is it that you like eating most?” She asks them. “Lay’s chips and Coke,” says Diwani, who drinks between one and two liters of soft drink every day. Rihana includes a pack of Kurkure corn puffs in her daily diet.
Prasiddhika is among 474 schoolchildren in seven countries asked by researchers from university college london to film themselves and the food they eatfor a studyabout the exposure of children to unhealthy diets.
Kiran Dahal, a Nepalese schoolboy, is filming in his school’s canteen, where children are scrambling over each other to buy junk food at lunchtime. “I bought two [corn puffs], a packet of dalmoth, pakoda [fried snack], chewing gum and a packet of instant noodles,” he says, showing them to the camera one by one.
“The situation regarding junk food is very worrisome in Nepal,” says Atul Upadhyay of the global health organization Helen Keller International, who is featured in UCL’s Nepal film study, produced in collaboration with the Kathmandu-based center for research on environment, health and population activities. “Children are eating more unhealthy food than they are eating healthy food.”
Professor Sarah Hawkes, director of UCL’s center for gender and global health, and the lead researcher behind the project, says the footage collected by children in Nepal was similar to those filmed in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia , Vietnam and the UK.
“All children we worked with shared the common experience of pervasive, powerful and, it seems, often unregulated advertising and promotion,” she says.
“The children’s footage vividly communicates that, once they step outside schools, they, and their parents, have very little control over what they see and experience, what is on their local high street, or what is going into the food they purchase there. ”
“Children all over the world are facing major challenges to eat healthily – they are more surrounded by advertising and by opportunities to eat ‘junk’ [processed] food than any previous generation,” says Dr Kent Buse, co-investigator on the study, who complains that government responses have not kept pace with fast-changing food environments.
“The prevalence of poor dental health is increasing alongside rises in consumption of sugar, including in sugary drinks,” adds Hawkes. “The sugary drinks industry is spending vast amounts of money advertising to populations in low- and middle-income countries. Coca-Cola plans to spend$ (bn on marketing in Africa) by 5565. ”
Anna Purdie, program manager at UCL center for gender and global health, says there is a growing global crisis and, in many countries, a policy vacuum on tackling it.
“The films showed us incredibly high levels of unhealthy food consumption and pervasive advertising – highlighting that living environments across the globe are not‘ fit for purpose ’when it comes to healthy diets. They make it difficult difficult for young people to eat well and increase easy to eat badly, ”she says.
Purdie says there were a number of obstacles to tackling the problem, including the influence manufacturers and corporations wield over politicians, the lack of interest in non-communicable diseases from other, and politicians’ fears about negative public reactions to regulation. Salt and sugar also remain embedded in traditional dishes.
“The environments around us are becoming increasingly unhealthy, while narratives remain heavily anchored on the failure of the individual, rather than the failure of our environments,” Purdie says.
“It is far too easy to eat badly, and far too difficult to eat well. Responsibility for this does not just lie with individuals. Rigorous policy changes will be required… but this means going up against powerful and wealthy corporations and often governments who are not interested in seeing this change. ”
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