Choices has been invited to attend a high-level consultation by UNICEF on ‘food systems and children’. In their strategic plan 2020-2030, UNICEF wants to bring ´healthy food based diets to the core of their activities’. Three important developments cause the need of re-thinking food for children in developing countries: the double burden of malnutrition, the upcoming food systems approach and urbanization (already more than 50% of the global population lives in cities nowadays).
In this UNICEF consultation, in November in Florence, there was clear consensus about the priority actions to make children’s diets healthier:
(1) education of parents, teachers, children and food providers
(2) a healthier food provision based on scientific criteria
(3) an interpretive labelling system based on the same criteria
(4) health driven reformulation and
(5) responsible marketing to children.
For Choices this was a good reason to draft a Choices policy paper on ‘healthy food choices for children’, that will be published at the beginning of 2019.