Effective regulatory approaches to protect, support and promote better diets and create healthy food environments for children
UNICEF Technical Note
About
This Technical Note has been prepared to help UNICEF staff advocate for policies to protect, promote and support healthy diets for children as recommended by the UNICEF Nutrition Strategy 2020–2030 and UNICEF’s Guidance on the Prevention of Overweight and Obesity in Children and Adolescents. This document provides a high-level summary of the global mandates for action, identifies priority regulatory actions, describes international evidence and experience and lists detailed resources that are available for further reading.
Throughout this Technical Note, the importance of evidence in guiding policy design, development and implementation is stressed. Interventions should specify clear, measurable and achievable objectives. This Technical Note focuses on regulatory actions because government-led mandatory measures with effective compliance mechanisms are shown to be more effective than voluntary actions such as industry self-regulation.
A greater understanding of the evidence, common challenges and effective rebuttals will help ensure that UNICEF teams can support governments develop a robust and comprehensive regulatory response to overweight and obesity in children and adolescents.
