José Graziano da Silva | 18/09/2025
Two important reports released in recent weeks shed light on both the challenges and the opportunities we face to ensure that children grow up healthy, well-nourished, and ready for the future. UNICEF’s Feeding Profit: How Food Environments Are Failing Children exposes the ways in which aggressive marketing and the widespread availability of ultra-processed products are shaping unhealthy diets and driving an alarming surge in childhood obesity. In parallel, the World Food Programme’s State of School Feeding Worldwide 2024 highlights the unprecedented expansion of school meal programmes across the globe, now reaching 466 million students — a 20 percent increase since 2020.
Taken together, these reports tell a powerful story. On one side, children are under siege from an industry that profits by promoting sugary drinks, salty snacks, and fast food that compromise their health. On the other, governments, schools, farmers, and communities show that it is possible to build healthier food environments through school feeding programmes that protect the right to food, support education, and create healthy habits for life.
From Undernutrition to Obesity: UNICEF’s Warning
UNICEF’s findings are sobering. For the first time, global obesity among children and adolescents has surpassed undernutrition. More than 390 million young people between the ages of 5 and 19 are now overweight. Even more worrying is how fast this shift is occurring in low- and middle-income countries, where undernutrition is still a challenge but obesity has already become the dominant form of malnutrition.
The report shows how ultra-processed foods — cheap, aggressively marketed, and readily available — displace fresh and nutritious foods in children’s diets. The consequences go beyond physical health: they increase risks of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Families bear not only the financial burden of medical expenses but also the emotional cost of watching their children grow up with health problems that could have been prevented.
UNICEF calls for decisive action: restrictions on marketing unhealthy foods, product reformulation, taxes on sugary drinks, and above all, ensuring access to nutritious diets. It is a call for governments to reclaim their central duty to protect children’s right to healthy food.
The Other Side of the Coin: WFP’s State of Global School Meals
The WFP report offers hope. Despite global crises, governments have expanded school feeding programmes at a historic pace. Nearly 80 million additional children are now receiving meals at school compared to four years ago. The most significant progress has been made in Africa, where coverage increased by almost 60 percent, with remarkable gains in countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Madagascar, and Kenya.
The School Meals Coalition, launched in 2021 in the context of the UN Food Systems Summit, has become one of the most successful multilateral initiatives of the post-pandemic era. Today it brings together 108 governments and 144 partner organizations working to ensure that every child has access to a nutritious meal at school by 2030.
The benefits are immense. School meals improve learning, reduce absenteeism, act as the world’s largest social safety net, and create stable markets for smallholder farmers. They generate jobs, strengthen local economies, and promote healthier and more sustainable diets. Studies show returns of up to nine dollars for every dollar invested, making school feeding one of the smartest development investments a country can make.
Brazil’s Commitment and the Role of Family Farming
Brazil is a global reference in this field. The National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) provides free meals to more than 40 million students every school day and requires that at least 30 percent of the food be purchased from family farmers. This innovation directly connects rural livelihoods to children’s nutrition, strengthening family agriculture and ensuring fresh, diverse food on school tables.
In 2025, Brazil will reaffirm its leadership by hosting the Second Global School Feeding Summit, which starts tomorrow in Fortaleza. The event will not only celebrate achievements but also call for greater ambition: expanding the reach of programmes and ensuring that all children, especially the most vulnerable, have access to healthy and sustainable meals.
It is here that Brazil’s experience becomes particularly relevant for the world. Linking school meals to family farming is one of the most effective ways of “bringing together hunger and the will to eat.” While guaranteeing healthy food for millions of children, it also provides income and inclusion for small farmers, strengthens local economies, and builds bridges between rural and urban communities.
I have personally witnessed the importance of this approach in several African countries, where Brazil had the opportunity to provide technical cooperation to help establish school feeding programmes based on local purchases from family farmers. This integration not only improves the quality of meals but also transforms local food systems by creating predictable, sustainable markets that encourage crop diversification and reduce rural vulnerability.
This dimension — integrating school feeding with family farming — deserves greater emphasis on the international agenda. It is a concrete way to make programmes more resilient, sustainable, and transformative, simultaneously achieving three objectives: fighting hunger, improving nutrition, and strengthening local production.
Two Reports, One Message
The connection between the two reports is clear. UNICEF shows how unregulated food environments are placing children’s health at risk. WFP demonstrates how well-designed public policies can turn the tide.
Healthy school meals are not just a way to fight hunger in the classroom. They are a strategic tool against the flood of ultra-processed foods, offering children a daily example of what good nutrition looks and tastes like. By shaping healthy habits early, school meals respond directly to UNICEF’s warning and help to reverse the global epidemic of childhood obesity.
A Call to Action
Much remains to be done. Half of the world’s primary school children still do not have access to school meals, and the inequalities are stark: coverage is only 27 percent in low-income countries compared to 80 percent in high-income countries. This gap must be closed.
We cannot allow commercial interests to outweigh the right to health. Governments must adopt comprehensive and binding regulations; civil society must demand accountability; and the international community must ensure that support reaches the most vulnerable countries.
Throughout my life dedicated to fighting hunger, I have learned that few policies have as broad and transformative an impact as school feeding. It saves lives, changes lives, and builds healthier societies. If we want to address the double burden of hunger and obesity and give children a fair chance at a better future, investing in healthy school meals is not optional — it is an obligation.
José Graziano da Silva is Director General at Instituto Fome Zero and Emeritus Professor at UNICAMP
