Malnutrition, scurvy and rickets – the shameful truth about child health in 2023

Child nutrition expert Dayna Brackley explains if we want to tackle the devastating truth about our children’s health, we need to transform the system and environment in which they live

Our food environment is also a huge contributor to our declining health (Getty)

Rickets, malnutrition and scurvy... in children. These are some of the conditions on the rise in the UK as reported by the Times Health Commission. According to the figures uncovered via a freedom of information request, malnutrition has more than doubled in the past ten years, and quadrupled since 2007/2008.

In 2023 in the UK, the sixth wealthiest nation in the world (measured by GDP), the health outcomes of our children are dire. The statistics paint a devastating picture: 23.4 per cent of 11- to 12-year-olds are living with obesity (the prevalence is twice as high for those living in deprived areas), close to a quarter of 5-year-olds have dental decay and children who have been raised in the age of austerity are shorter than their European counterparts. Shorter, bigger and in poorer health. How did we get here?

There are two main drivers for these worrying changes – the first is poverty and the second is the unhealthy food environment in which we live. A healthy diet is simply not affordable for those living in disadvantage.

A recent report by the Food Foundation showed how the poorest fifth of the population would need to spend half of their disposable income to meet the government’s diet recommendations. A healthy basket of food is three times more expensive than a basket of junk food. The government’s recommendations for our diet are simply not achievable for people living through a cost of living crisis.

Our food environment is also a huge contributor to our declining health. We have fast food restaurants surrounding our schools, breakfast cereals and yoghurts aimed at children which are laden with sugar – recently Nestle tried to tell us that their Kit Kat cereal was a “nutritious choice” – and a formula feeding industry which uses manipulative practices to drive sales while compromising breastfeeding.

We are set to fail. We have governments who shy away from what they refer to as “nanny state” policies, claiming they don’t want to tell us what to eat. The focus is on individual behaviour – you should move more, you should eat less. There’s no focus on all of these contributing factors that make it harder to move more, eat less, eat better, eat healthier.

If we want to tackle our children’s declining health, we need to start thinking about changing the system. In June this year the government (once again) delayed the junk food ban which would have halted the buy-one-get-one-free offers in supermarkets. Rishi Sunak’s argument was that he didn’t want to make shopping harder when food prices were high – but the government’s own evidence shows that these offers make people spend more not less. This (lack of) policy is making buying healthy food harder, not easier. This move has been heavily criticised by both Sainsbury’s and Tesco, who will press ahead with the ban despite the government’s hesitation.

One of the other quick-to-implement solutions to child nutrition would be to roll out free school meals. Free school meals improve diet quality, food security and also boost attainment. Sadiq Khan took the landmark step of introducing this scheme for London, beginning September this year, and other local authorities are looking to follow suit – but this should be a universal England-wide policy.

The Conservatives have continued to ignore the evidence, and Kier Starmer said in the last week that although there is a “healthy debate” on free school meals within the party, he refuses to commit to its implementation. Given that children consume between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of their daily calories during the school day, we have an opportunity here to change the dial on what our children are eating – it’s a big opportunity to miss.

We can’t continue to ignore the problem. The knock-on effects for our NHS, our children’s health and their life chances are already monumental. We have to focus on changing the environment our children live in. We’ve got to stop the junk food ads and make healthier food a more achievable target for everyone – especially for those living in poverty.

The government needs to be a guiding force for change. I want a world for my children where my eldest isn’t humming the “Just Eat” jingle, whilst begging me for the new deep-fried chocolate bar she’s seen advertised on the billboard close to her school. I want a world where headlines about rickets and scurvy in children aren’t the norm, and where children are nourished and well, not hungry and sick.

Dayna Brackley is a senior food policy consultant at Bremner & Co, an organisation working to improve child health and nutrition. Dayna is leading a review of early years nutrition in the UK. She is also an MSc student at the Centre for Food Policy