Barbados Childhood Obesity Rate Reaches 42 Percent, Urgent Action Needed

The minister stressed that while regulation was important, responsibility also rested with parents and caregivers.

“Children live first, what they see and they hear from the adults around them, what choices do we make on behalf of our children long before they can even read a full book, thereby curating their taste buds, helping to shape their preferences.”

She pointed to the overconsumption of foods during gatherings at buffets, the over-saturation of carbohydrates compared to the meagre supply of vegetables and salads, stressing the need to address adults first.

Campaigns and policies alone would not solve the problem, Senator Cummins suggested.

“We need awareness, we need education, we need community engagement, and we need national resolve and campaigns such as this one to stand right alongside individual responsibility and personal commitments.”

Chief executive officer of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Greta Yearwood, said the campaign’s central message that children’s health must come before commercial interests.

“If marketing practices contribute to unhealthy behaviours and place children’s health at risk, then appropriate measures must be taken to regulate them.”

She called for collaboration among all interest groups.

“This campaign calls on us, on all of us parents, educators, health professionals, policymakers, community leaders, and young people themselves to work together in creating healthier school environments and supporting policies that protect children from the unhealthy marketing practices. We are launching a call to action, a call to put children’s health first and to create environments that help them thrive.”

Hutton argued that children were being targeted through multiple marketing channels.

“Ultra-processed foods are being marketed to our children in the very places we send them to learn and to grow in and around our schools, through branded equipment, sponsored events, vouchers, and giveaways. The food industry is building brand loyalty in young minds that are not yet equipped to critically assess what they are being sold.”

She stressed: “This is not accidental. This is a strategy, and it must be stopped through regulation.”

Hutton also linked the issue to children’s rights, saying: “Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every nation on earth, every child has an inherent right to a healthy childhood free of exploitation.” The United States is the sole UN member state not to have ratified the convention.

Dr Lisa McLean-Trotman, social and behaviour change specialist with UNICEF’s Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area, said unhealthy food marketing was influencing children from an early age.

“The evidence shows that unhealthy food marketing is very highly persuasive and powerful in influencing children.”

Such marketing helped create social norms around food and eating habits and noted that adolescence was a critical stage of development, she said.

“In focusing on problems associated with ultra-processed foods, again, we all tend to focus on obesity, but we tend to overlook the fact that ultra-processed foods also lack other micronutrients, which are also important for brain development and well-being, and sometimes this also leads to other health concerns.”

Dr McLean-Trotman said obesity also affected other aspects of children’s lives, including education, mental health and social development.

“Research has shown correlations between obesity in children, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, and other mental health issues that we should be concerned about,” she said.

“This is not just a health issue, it’s a whole of country issue and that’s what we need to be looking at the whole issue of health and well-being as a whole of country approach.”

(LG)