How diets full of ultra-processed foods are causing a malnutrition crisis among poor children

Unicef report finds half of world’s children under five suffers from hidden hunger caused by eating cheap, filling food that lacks essential nutrients

Many poor city children have either no healthy food options or an abundance of high-calorie, low-nutrient processed foods

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A new Unicef report says diets that rely on cheap and ultra-processed foods like instant noodles are leading to a malnutrition crisis among the world’s underprivileged children. Photo: EPA

Published: 5:00am, 29 Oct 2019Updated: 3:51pm, 29 Oct 2019

Cheap, filling and tasty. There are many reasons why the humble instant noodle is a go-to comfort food for millions of people worldwide.

Packing shelves of supermarkets and convenience stores, the plastic-wrapped meals that take just minutes to prepare are also stocked in some office vending machines – a quick way to satisfy desk slaves too busy to leave the building.

But a new report says diets that rely on cheap and quick ultra-processed foods such as instant noodles are leading to a malnutrition crisis among the world’s underprivileged children.

The State of the World’s Children, an annual report whose 2019 edition was released this month by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), paints a depressing picture for millions of children, warning that poor diets are now the main risk factor for disease.

Instant noodles may taste good, but most are just empty calories loaded with salt and fat, with little nutritional value. Photo: Shutterstock

The report, the most comprehensive assessment of 21st-century child malnutrition, says that at least one in three of the world’s almost 700 million children under the age of five is undernourished or overweight, while half suffer from hidden hunger – a deficiency caused by eating food that is cheap and filling but lacking essential vitamins and micronutrients.

The report also found that 149 million children are stunted, or too short for their age, while 50 million children are wasting, an extreme form of undernutrition when a child is too thin for their height.

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