Getting food systems right from the start: how they are failing young children and what we can do about it?

Health talk convened by The United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization

Overview

Food flavours and preferences are shaped early in life with consequences for dietary patterns, food choices, culture and social norms later in life. There is growing concern that the promotion of breast-milk substitutes and some commercial foods for infant and young children undermines optimal infant and young child feeding, which results from our broken food systems. Yet, infant and young feeding practices are normally seen as a health practice and its protection is seen as a health systems intervention rather than a food systems intervention, thus often dismissed as too health-systems focused by agriculture groups.

Infant and young child feeding is often portrayed as individual behaviour, as a matter of free parental choice, and the responsibility of mothers and parents alone. In the contrast, as stated, feeding decisions are powerfully shaped by transformations underway in first-food systems associated with the globalization of the baby food industry and its marketing practices and the shift of labour and production out of the home, in the context of weak or absent maternity protection. Key actions relevant to healthy and sustainable food systems would be the prevention of unethical formula marketing, re-formulation of commercial complementary foods and formula to reduce unhealthy ingredients, and marketing restrictions for unhealthy commercial products consumed by infants and young children.

Objectives:

• Setting the stage for overall intersections of the food systems framework and infant and young child feeding issues including:
• Generation of demand for healthy infant and young child feeding (breastfeeding and healthy complementary foods).
• Health impacts of ultra-processed foods (formula & commercial complementary foods with high sugar and/or sodium).
• Environmental impacts of infant feeding choices. Marketing of commercial products (formula & commercial complementary foods). Globalization of markets and trade implications.

Agenda

14:00 - 14:05 - Opening remarks by Grainne Moloney from UNICEF.

14:05 – 14:10 - Setting the stage by moderator Lucy Sullivan.

14:10 – 14:22 - Overview of how infant feeding is truly a “first food system” by Phillip Baker from Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

Three key aspects of the first food system that need fixing

14:23 – 14:35 - Marketing of breast-milk substitutes by Lesley Oot from Alive and Thrive.

14:36 – 14:48 - Sugar and salt content of commercial complementary foods by Jo Jewell from UNICEF.

14:49 – 15:01 - Consumption of “junk foods” by infants and young children by Alissa Pries from Helen Keller International.

15:01 – 15:25 - Q&A .

15:25 – 15:30 - Closing remarks by Larry Grummer-Strawn from WHO.

Resources

• Unhealthy Snack Food and Beverage Consumption Is Associated with Lower Dietary Adequacy and Length-for-Age z-Scores among 12-23-Month-Olds in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

• Globalization, first-foods systems transformations and corporate power: a synthesis of literature and data on the market and political practices of the transnational baby food industry.

• First-food systems transformations and the ultra-processing of infant and young child diets: The determinants, dynamics and consequences of the global rise in commercial milk formula consumption.

• The first food system.

• Towards healthy and sustainable first-food systems and universal breastfeeding: informing the food systems transformation agenda.