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: 

https://www.unicef.org/media/174091/file/CNR%202025%20-%20Feeding%20Profit%20-%20Final%20Report%20-%20English%20-%20FINAL.pdf.pdf (Newswire)

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Being married triples the risk of men becoming obese, research suggests.

The chance of piling on the pounds increased for both sexes after marriage, however.

Women’s risk of being overweight was 39% higher – and men’s 62% – compared with unmarried couples.

But married men were 3.2 times more likely to be classed as technically obese than their unmarried counterparts, according to the study.

This finding wasn’t mirrored in females, which the Polish researchers said could be because women who are obese “are more often stigmatised” by society.

Dr Alicja Cicha-Mikolajczyk, from Warsaw’s National Institute of Cardiology, suggested women “cannot accept living with obesity” and are more likely to take action to lose weight.

In the UK, the NHS generally classes obese people as having a body mass index (BMI) of above 30, and being overweight is associated with a BMI of 25-30.

However, the measure (which looks only at height and weight) has been criticised by some as over simplistic.

The study – which looked at 2,405 Polish people, typically aged 50 – also found getting older increased the risk of becoming heavier in both sexes.

Each extra year increased the risk of being overweight by 3% in men and 4% in women; and the risk of obesity by 4% in men and 6% in women.

Depression or poor health knowledge also had a significant impact on the risk of women becoming obese – but this wasn’t found in men.

The team concluded: “Age and marital status have undeniable impact on living with overweight or obesity in adulthood regardless of sex.

“In turn, inadequate health literacy and having at least borderline depression were associated with obesity in women.

“It appears from our results that the dissemination of health knowledge and health promotion across the lifespan could reduce the worrying phenomenon of increasing levels of obesity.”

The findings will be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Spain in May. (Sky News)

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