The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says child overweight has tripled in 20 years in Sri Lanka, and that children deserve healthy food environments, not ones that harm their health.
“Sri Lanka is among the group of countries where overweight has at least tripled in the last two decades,” UNICEF said, issuing its latest report.
Per the report, globally, one in twenty children under 5 years of age (5 per cent) and one in five children and adolescents aged 5–19 years (20 per cent) are living with overweight.
The 2025 Child Nutrition Report, ‘Feeding Profit: How food environments are failing children’, reveals how unhealthy food environments are contributing to the worldwide surge in overweight and obesity in children and adolescents.
Drawing from recent examples of countries that have made extraordinary progress, the report presents eight recommendations to transform children’s food environments:
- Implement the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions to protect and promote breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding.
- Implement comprehensive, mandatory measures to transform food environments (school food environments, food marketing restrictions, food labelling, taxes on unhealthy foods and beverages and food reformulation).
- Implement comprehensive policies to improve the availability and affordability of locally produced nutritious foods for children and adolescents.
- Establish robust safeguards to protect public policy processes from interference by the ultra-processed food industry.
- Implement social and behaviour change initiatives that empower families and communities to claim their right to a healthy food environment.
- Strengthen social protection programs to address income poverty and increase children’s access to nutritious and healthy diets.
- Engage young people in public policymaking on food justice by fostering youth-led advocacy.
- Strengthen global and national data and surveillance systems to monitor food environments, diets, and overweight among children and adolescents.
The full UNICEF report: