Claire Johnson
For the first time in history, obesity among school-age children and adolescents has overtaken underweight worldwide. That is the headline finding of UNICEF’s 2025 Child Nutrition Report: Feeding Profit released today, which I co-authored during my time at UNICEF Headquarters as the Global Technical Lead for Food Environments and Childhood Obesity Prevention. It marks a historic turning point in the nutrition crisis – and a stark warning that today’s global food systems are fuelling a generational health emergency.
The report shows how aggressive marketing, misleading packaging, and food industry profiteering are shaping children’s diets from the earliest years. Ultra-processed products promoted as “healthy,” “natural,” or “fortified” are, in reality, loaded with excess sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. This is not an accident. This is a result of deliberate marketing strategies focused on profit while nurturing unhealthy food choices and lifelong risks of obesity.
Globally, one in five children and adolescents, aged 5–19, now lives with overweight, and the number has doubled since 2000. Obesity now accounts for a growing share of this burden, with 163 million children worldwide living with obesity. At the same time, ultra-processed foods make up between one-third and one-half of adolescent energy intake in many countries, and 75% of young people from the Ukraine to Micronesia report seeing ads for sugary drinks, snacks, or fast food every week.
“One in five children aged 5–19 is overweight – a number that has doubled since 2000,” UNICEF’s latest report states.
Australia is not removed from these global forces. In fact, the strategies identified by UNICEF echo through our own supermarkets, school canteens, and digital spaces. Toddler snack pouches, sugary drinks and “convenience” foods dominate shelves, many claiming health benefits. In reality, these products mislead, confuse, and erode the foundations of healthy childhood diets.
Creating healthier food environments is not optional; it is an urgent prevention strategy. As Australians, we have a responsibility not only to our children but also to our Pacific neighbours, who face some of the highest rates of obesity and unregulated food environments in the world.
This isn’t about blaming parents. It’s about recognising that the environments where children live, learn, and play are actively sabotaging their health. The food system is broken. Profit, not children’s well-being, is driving what ends up on their plates.
What does this mean for Australia?
Firstly, childhood obesity is not a distant threat – it is a pressing reality. Policymakers, educators, health professionals and industry must understand that our national health agenda cannot succeed without tackling how food is regulated, produced and promoted.
Secondly, we must hold food systems accountable. Misleading marketing cannot continue unchecked. Allowing unhealthy products to be aggressively marketed and sold as healthy, makes us complicit in undermining the health of Australian children.
Finally, prevention must begin with reshaping food environments. That means stronger regulation of labelling and marketing, healthier nutrition standards in schools and childcare setting, and accountability for an industry that profits from harmful food environments.
Creating healthier food environments is not optional; it is an urgent prevention strategy.
Three highlights for Australia
- Obesity has overtaken underweight among children and adolescents. The global shift to diet-driven obesity is mirrored in Australia’s rising childhood overweight rates.
- Unhealthy food marketing and broken food systems drive this trend. Foods marketed as nutritious often deliver empty calories and addictive levels of sugar, salt and fat – shaping lifelong habits.
- System-level prevention is essential. Australia must regulate how foods are marketed, labelled and sold, aligning industry incentives with children’s health rather than profit.
UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Report 2025 is a wake-up call. Protecting children’s nutrition means putting health before profit and demanding integrity in the food choices surrounding every child. Only then can we begin to rebuild food systems that nourish, rather than erode, our children’s future.
Dr Claire Johnson is PHAA’s Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor.
Photo courtesy: Gustavo Fring, Pexels
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