Fed to Fail: 2021 Child Nutrition Report : UNICEF

Context: Children under the age of 2 are not getting the food or nutrients they need to thrive and grow well, leading to irreversible developmental harm, according to a new report released by UNICEF.
Key Concerns

• Policies and programmes to improve young children’s diets are not prioritised and are being further eroded by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Nearly 83% countries reported considerable disruptions in the coverage of services to promote nutritious and safe diets for young children at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in April 2020.
• No country has a comprehensive set of policies, legal measures and programmes to improve young children’s diets.

Key Findings

• As per the report, two in every three children between six months and two years did not get the nutritious diet needed for healthy growth.
• Around 27% of children aged six-eight months were not fed any solid food.
• Among children aged 6–23 months, around half were not fed the minimum number of meals or snacks.
• The diet of the world’s children below the age of two years has not improved in the last decade, and continues to get inadequate nutrients.
• The quality of children’s diets varies widely among regions.
• As many as 62% of children aged 6–23 months in Latin America and the Caribbean were fed a minimally diverse diet in 2020.
• In South Asia and two sub-Saharan African regions, the share was less than 25%.
• Children in rural areas, poorer households and disadvantaged regions within countries have the least diverse diets.
• Around one in every three young children in Australia, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Serbia and Sudan were fed at least one processed or ultra-processed food or drink daily.

About the report

• The report is a flagship report of United Nations Children's Fund.
• It examined the latest data and evidence on the status, trends and inequities in the diets of children aged 6–23 months and barriers to nutritious diets.
• The analysis used data from the UNICEF Global Database on Infant and Young Child Feeding.
• The repository collated data from 607 nationally representative surveys conducted in 135 countries and territories, representing more than 90% of all children under 2 years of age globally.

Key Recommendations

To deliver a nutritious, safe and affordable diet to every child, the report recommended the following actions:

• Increasing the availability and affordability of nutritious foods. Design social transfers – cash, food and/or vouchers – that support nutritious and safe diets in early childhood.
• Implementing national standards and legislation to protect young children from unhealthy processed food and drink. Ending harmful marketing practices targeting children and families.
• Position young children’s right to nutritious and safe diets as a priority in the national development agenda and ensure coherent policy support and legislation.
• Expand caregiver access to quality counselling and support on young child feeding by investing in the recruitment, training, supervision and motivation of community-based counsellors and health workers.

Road Ahead

• Poor nutritional intake in the first two years of life can irreversibly harm children’s rapidly growing bodies and brains, impacting their schooling, job prospects and futures.
• Children cannot survive or thrive on calories alone. Only by joining forces with governments, the private sector, civil society, development and humanitarian partners, and families can we transform food systems and unlock nutritious, safe and affordable diets for every child. 
• The upcoming UN Food Systems Summit is an important opportunity to set the stage for global food systems that meet the needs of all children.