Consumption to Exclude Ultra-Processed Foods from Children's Hospital Menus

Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy, announced on Wednesday that his department is working to exclude ultra-processed foods from children's menus offered to patients admitted to hospitals.

"We are going to ensure healthy menus without ultra-processed foods for all children and adolescents admitted to hospital centres," the minister highlighted during his participation in the national workshop within the WHO Plan to halt obesity, held at the Ministry of Health.

Additionally, he added that the aim is also to ensure healthy menus without ultra-processed foods in hospital cafeterias and public dining areas. "This is a next step, always within the perspective of policy coherence and assuming that each intervention on its own will be insufficient to tackle a challenge and a task of this magnitude," he added.

Bustinduy reported that this step is part of the royal decree to ensure healthy eating in hospitals and elderly residences, which, he added, will be publicly known in the coming weeks.

"The issue of ultra-processed foods has been in the spotlight since the publication of the editorial in 'The Lancet', also with a communication from the World Health Organization, which precisely identified the exponential growth of ultra-processed foods in diets as a threat to global public health," he pointed out.

For Bustinduy, the "incoherence" of hospitals offering ultra-processed foods must be eradicated, as "they are harmful to health."

CHILDHOOD OBESITY IN SPAIN

During the event held at the Ministry of Health, some of the plans the Government is implementing to halt childhood obesity were recalled. At this point, the minister emphasized that the Government approved a royal decree to ensure that all children have five healthy meals a week in schools.

Despite this, he assured that more measures must be taken to continue reducing childhood obesity in the country. Thus, he highlighted that the latest ALADINO Study shows a positive result with a decrease of four and a half points in the prevalence rates of excess weight in the child population.

However, he warned that the same report reflects that the socio-economic vulnerability gap in Spain is widening. "Among families with incomes below 18,000 euros gross per year, the prevalence of excess weight is 48 percent, while in families with more than 30,000 euros, the percentage is 29 percent," he noted.

"This confirms that the social determinants of health (...) cause children from socio-economically vulnerable families to be much more exposed to some of the main threats posed by childhood obesity in our country," he stated.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, agreed on the importance of social determinants in advancing childhood obesity in Spain.

"At Health, we always say that obesity is the tip of the iceberg and that, underneath, it hides all the social determinants that cause childhood obesity to appear. Therefore, we always focus on public policies," she detailed.

García recalled that obesity in children under 5 years has increased from 4.6 percent to 5.4 percent. Additionally, in adolescents, it has risen from 8 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2023.

In this line, she highlighted the National Strategic Plan for the Reduction of Childhood Obesity (PENROI), which involves 18 ministries and includes more than 200 actions.