South Africa’s campaigners for healthy food

It is at lunch at the lush land of the Kairos School for investigation in Randburg, South Africa.

Dozens of children are enthusiastically lined in front of a table loaded with large fresh hot food.

“Today in our list is Kitchari – a mixture of signifier and rice, with tomato sauce, Halome and salad.”

The school decided mainly a plant diet as part of an attempt to photograph a worrying global trend: for the first time, The number of children with weight gain has exceeded the number of children with weight loss.

The United Nations says that the number of adolescents with weight gain and obesity all over the world has doubled almost three times in the past two decades.

The number of children with weight gain between the ages of five to nine years increased from 69 million to 147 million.

Parents in Kairos were asked to pack only full foods in lunch boxes for their children.

School principal, Mark, believes that the policy has provided an opportunity to teach students about the importance of healthy eating.

He said, “If all schools mimic our intention to be aware, conscious of what children put in their bodies … the health of children will be presented,” he said.

The popularity of increasing foods in the developing world is partly responsible for growing obesity among children, according to UNICEF.

Trainer, Mthembu, 23, told BBC that when the younger fast food was fun.

“I grew up with my grandmother, not in the best conditions,” she says. “Unwanted food was something we looked at because my grandmother did not always had money, so it was a symbol of celebration.”

For this reason, she says she has never thought of unhealthy fast food. Instead, it became ambitious.

But that changed when she moved to Pretoria, 19, to the university, as her student residence was at the top of a fast food restaurant.

With a crowded schedule, she says she found herself choosing food on cooking – and had a permanent effect on her health.

“Now I suffer from weight gain, it is something I am not proud of,” she says. “I have been bleeding as a child from eating a lot of sweets that I still have today. I have begun to have breathing problems.”

Her struggles pushed her to become an UNICEF advocate in her spare time. She wants more students to be familiar with the damage that fast food can cause to their health.

Poor and medium -income countries have seen the largest increase in children with weight gain and obesity.

But in poor countries, children with weight gain tend to be one of the richest families that can pay for high -calorie foods, in medium income economies such as South Africa, can enjoy going to fast food restaurants.

This led to an explosion in the number of chains throughout the country. The value of the fast food market in South Africa was $ 2.7 billion in 2018, and it is expected to reach $ 4.9 billion by 2026.

UNICEF says more work is needed to prevent these companies from marketing to children and youth.

“Previously, we always blame the individual for not exercising enough, or we do not eat healthy,” says Jilbert Chitodesi, UNICEF Nutrition Manager.

“But we now know that this is not really the case. How do you expect the individual to live a healthier lifestyle if his environment does not enable them to do so?”

He says they advised the South African government to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food for children.

The constant presence of comfortable food is an additional challenge for parents who want to maintain the health of their children.

The eight -year -old daughter of Badi, Sofia, was diagnosed with rare autoimmune diseases (acute essential encephalitis) when she was 18 months old.

Sofia gave doping shots to help her symptoms, but her mother believes that she led her weight to a balloon. It is now weighing 107 kg.

“Nutritionists can see this not related to food,” she says.

The memory put her daughter on a low -carb diet, but she is still struggling to maintain her weight.

Supporters created social media pages to raise money for Sofia. Although memory says she cannot afford fast food costs, the attackers will sometimes buy her for her daughter as a treatment.

“We rarely go out, but when we do it, you sometimes ask about fast food. She is a child, so she wants these things.”

Memory is currently unemployed and struggles to provide her daughter with the support she needs, including swimming lessons.

Sometimes it takes Sofia to walk in their neighborhood in Alexandra, a town near the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg, but traffic and lever makes it uncomfortable.

The South African government provided higher taxes on sugary drinks in 2018.

But the increasing obesity rate in children did not stop: 22 % of children under the age of five with weight gain or obesity in South Africa, up from 13 % in 2016.

UNICEF says that countries need to improve access to local foods that are nurtured for children and adolescents.

“South Africa is known to be safe for food,” says Chitodesi. “But many families do not have money to reach more healthy options due to our high unemployment.”

Once again at Kairos School, it is time to break. Children eat lunch filled with fruits, vegetables and sandwiches made from camspaches.

Until governments can implement policies that can reflect the increase in obesity in childhood, institutions and individuals are left to protect the health of future generations.