Are food regulations failing to protect children?

On World Food Day, Andrea Galante and Carmen Tse back World Vision's ENOUGH campaign, calling for mandatory food regulation policies that uphold every child’s right to a healthy diet. 

Every child has the right to a healthy diet, but this right is increasingly under threat. Unhealthy food environments and aggressive marketing tactics are leaving millions of children without the nutrition they need and contributing to rising global obesity and diet-related diseases, especially amongst school-aged children and adolescents. 

The EAT–Lancet Commission (2025) and the UNICEF report (2025) emphasise how these food environments—shaped by affordability, accessibility, and marketing—drive unhealthy food choices, especially among children, who are highly susceptible to such influence. Ultra-processed foods, packed with excessive sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats, have become widespread. At the same time, commercial milk formulas and baby food products are increasingly displacing breastfeeding and nutritious complementary foods.

Despite the well-documented risks, the powerful influence of the food industry continues to undermine efforts to regulate these harmful products, leaving children at greater risk of poor nutrition and diet-related diseases. Children are especially vulnerable to unhealthy food environments and marketing, which shape lifelong eating habits and undermine their right to nutritious diets.

The unhealthy facts

• Ultra-processed food and drink account for a significant portion of calories in adults (16% up to 80%) and children (18% among preschool children in Colombia, and 68% among adolescents in the UK).
• Consuming ultra-processed foods comes with serious health risks, including heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, mental health problems, and early death for adults, and obesity and diet-related diseases for children.
• Globally, 478 million young children (71%) eat from four or fewer of the eight main food groups daily, which is known as food poverty.
• A worrying trend is the rising consumption of unhealthy food and drinks among children aged 6 to 23 months, displacing nutritious complementary foods and breastmilk essential for their development.
• Currently, 426 million children and adolescents are affected by overweight and obesity globally. For the first time, UNICEF reports obesity exceeding underweight for school-aged children 5-19 years of age.
• The commercial milk formula industry generates a staggering $55 billion in annual sales. Yet this profit comes at a huge cost to women and children, with an estimated $500 billion lost each year due to the costs of not breastfeeding.

Why mandatory food regulations matter

Voluntary self-regulation by the food industry is not effective and public policies cannot be swayed by its conflicting commercial interests. 

Governments, as the guardians of public health, must implement legally binding measures to create healthier food environments and act to safeguard children from aggressive and unethical marketing tactics.

Here are some key policy actions that need to be taken:

• Ban marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks to children
• Implement fiscal policies like sugar taxes to reduce the sale and consumption of unhealthy food and drink
• Mandate front-of-pack warning labels to help consumers make better choices and reduce purchases of unhealthy products
• Regulate school food environments to promote healthy eating and prohibit exposure to unhealthy food and drink marketing to children
• Strengthen implementation, enforcement and monitoring of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes to support and protect healthy diets for young children

We’re calling on governments to step up

Civil society organisations, including World Vision, are calling on governments to:

• Adopt mandatory regulations that restrict the marketing, appeal, and availability of unhealthy food and drink products targeting children.
• Establish transparent rules of engagement to prevent corporate interference in public health policymaking.
• Hold the private sector accountable to ethical marketing standards and require contributions to healthier food environments and diets.
• Empower youth and grassroots movements to advocate for stronger food policies that protect their health.

With strong political will and collective action, we can create a future where every child has access to a healthy diet they need to thrive.

For more information, read our policy brief: Ensuring Children's Rights to Healthy Diets: The role of mandatory food regulation in creating healthy food environments, part of World Vision’s ENOUGH Campaign on Child Hunger and Malnutrition, which calls for stronger food regulations to ensure healthy diets and food environments for every child.

Andrea Galante is Senior Manager, Coalitions and Emerging Global Partnerships, and Carmen Tse is Senior Technical Advisor, Health and Nutrition.