Raising Healthy Voices: Shafa’s Fight for Food Justice
Shafa Syahrani, a bright young Indonesian, was fascinated by how food shapes health. But her curiosity led to a troubling discovery.
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At 23, Shafa Syahrani seems like many young Indonesians –bright, curious and full of dreams. She grew up in Makassar and studied Food and Nutrition at Universitas Negeri Makassar. Shafa was always fascinated by how food shapes health, but the more she learned, the more troubled she became.
“As a child, I never really knew which foods were healthy,” Shafa recalls, “We thought packaged milk was good because it was milk, but it’s packed with sugar. Even today, so many young people don’t know what’s truly healthy.”
This is not just a personal concern for Shafa. It is a growing crisis. Across East Asia and the Pacific, overweight and obesity are rising among children and adolescents. In Indonesia alone, nearly one million children under five, one in five school children aged 5-12 years, and one in seven adolescents are affected (Kemenkes, 2024).
Behind these statistics is a simple reality: unhealthy food is everywhere; it is cheap and often the only option. This food is also aggressively marketed, not applying ethical safeguards that should be in place for food marketed to children.
“Junk food is everywhere. It’s easy to find and hard to resist. Even gifts for kids are usually candy.”
Instead of staying silent, Shafa decided to take action. She applied to join Fix My Food Indonesia, a youth-led initiative supported by UNICEF’s East Asia and Pacific Regional Office. The initiative aims to empower young leaders to challenge unhealthy food environments and demand change.
“I knew that if this campaign was backed by UNICEF, we could reach the right people,” Shafa says. “We could make real change!”
Together with two other young leaders, Bian (age 20, from Sukabumi) and Vanessa (age 24, from Papua), Shafa became part of the Core Research Team for Fix My Food Indonesia. Their mission was to uncover how unhealthy food is marketed to children and what can be done to stop it.
It wasn’t an easy task.
“We didn’t have a guidebook,” Shafa explains. “We had to figure out how to recruit volunteers, gather stories and analyze data. Many people dropped out. But we kept going.”
A Youth-Led Investigation
Shafa and the team designed a creative way to document young people’s food reality. They launched a nationwide “Food Scavenger Hunt”, inviting young people ages 14-24 to share photos and stories about what they saw, ate and were influenced to buy every day.
A total of 223 young Indonesians participated. Using their phones, they captured the food they ate, and the food that was cheap, visible and marketed most aggressively. The stories that emerged revealed a pattern: fried snacks consumed daily because they are the cheapest option and lack of awareness of what constitutes healthy or unhealthy food.
Shafa herself was shocked by her own discovery, “Even in my own family, my mom banned certain food additives, such as aspartame, but didn’t realize how much sugar packaged drinks contain. Education is not reaching everyone equally.”
Research Leads to Advocacy
With support from the East Asia and Pacific Regional Office and UNICEF Indonesia’s Country Office, the young researchers turned their findings into advocacy. Every week, UNICEF mentors provided guidance to overcome challenges, boost their spirit and celebrate wins. Then came the big moment.
On July 10, 2025, Shafa stood before representatives from, among others, the Ministry of Health and the Indonesian Food and Drug Authority, representing the voices of hundreds of Indonesian youths. She presented the team’s findings:
- 43% of youth admitted choosing food for its look or smell.
- 27% went for cheap and filling options.
- 13% ate whatever was nearby.
- 11% admitted to overeating due to portion deals.
- Only 8% mentioned traditional foods, connecting it to culture, family and belonging.
“This is a lost opportunity,” Shafa told policy makers, “Traditional foods can serve as a solution to replace unhealthy foods, provided they are made more visible, affordable and aspirational. In this way, traditional foods can promote healthier eating If made more visible, affordable and aspirational. In this way, traditional foods can promote healthier eating.”
Her advocacy messages were clear: regulate unhealthy food marketing, especially digital ads; make healthier options visible in high-traffic areas such as checkout zones; strengthen nutrition and media literacy; and require health warnings on food ads targeting children and young people.
For Shafa, the moment felt almost like a dream. “I couldn’t believe it. We were at the policy table. With UNICEF by our side, we were being heard,” she says.
Shafa’s words didn’t just land, they resonated. In her response, Dr. Siti Nadia Tarmizi, Director of Non-Communicable Diseases at Indonesia’s Ministry of Health echoed her call, emphasizing the urgency to protect children and adolescents from unhealthy food marketing, such as “buy one, get one free” deals.
She acknowledged that children are highly vulnerable to persuasive marketing strategies and stressed the need for government, civil society and private sector to work together to make healthier food the easier choice.
Shafa will never forget the pride in her parents’ eyes or the text messages she received from friends saying: “You’re making us proud.”
The Road Ahead
For Shafa, this is just the beginning. The momentum is building. With continued youth engagement, cross-sectoral collaboration and partnerships with government, civil society and the private sector, she is convinced that creating healthier food environments is possible.
“It breaks my heart that something so basic, what we eat, can decide whether a child grows up healthy or sick,” she says. “That’s why I keep going.”
Her vision is simple but powerful – a generation of Indonesian children who understand what their bodies truly need, supported by a food system that makes healthy choices visible, affordable and desirable.
By equipping young leaders with tools, knowledge and space to act, UNICEF helps ensure that health is no longer a privilege, but a right, accessible to every child.
Learn more about the Fix My Food movement and how you can support healthier food systems for children at: https://www.unicef.org/eap/fix-my-food.
