First step to fixing children’s nutrition is listening to them — Here’s how 140,000 young voices are shaping future of food in India

For years, adults have been making decisions about what children eat. Across India, a growing movement is showing that it may be time for children and young people to help make those decisions too.

Every morning, millions of Indian children leave home carrying lunchboxes packed by someone else.

On the way to school, they pass brightly coloured shops stacked with chips, sugary drinks and instant noodles. By the time classes end, Instagram reels, YouTube videos and celebrity endorsements have served up another helping of food advertising, telling them what to crave, what to buy and what to believe.

For most young people, these choices feel normal. What is less normal is being asked what they think about them.

For decades, conversations around nutrition in India have largely taken place without the very people they are meant to serve. Researchers studied dietary trends. Policymakers designed programmes. Schools introduced health lessons. Parents tried their best to encourage healthier eating.

Everyone had ideas about what children should eat. Very few stopped to ask children what made healthy eating so difficult in the first place. When they finally did, the answers changed the conversation.

More than 140,000 adolescents from across India shared their experiences through a nationwide U-Report survey conducted as part of the Let’s Fix Our Food initiative by Indian Council of Medical Research–National Institute of Nutrition and UNICEF. Their responses were honest, practical and revealing.

Many said food advertisements influenced what they chose to eat. Others said healthy food was often too expensive or difficult to find. Many wanted to understand food labels better before buying packaged foods. Others pointed to the lack of healthier options in and around schools.

The survey went beyond collecting opinions and challenged one of the biggest assumptions in public health: that young people simply need to be taught what to eat.

Instead, it showed that they wanted something more meaningful. They wanted to be partners in creating healthier food environments. Their eating choices were shaped not only by awareness, but also by what was affordable, accessible and available around them. That means improving food environments is just as important as asking children to make better choices.

That simple shift in thinking became the foundation of a growing national movement. Unlike many public health programmes, this one did not begin with solutions. It began with listening.

Over the past four years, a series of national dialogues has brought together policymakers, researchers, educators, development partners and young people to discuss some of India’s most pressing nutrition challenges, from junk food marketing and front-of-pack nutrition labelling to healthier school food environments and nutrition literacy.

For many adolescents, it was the first time they had been invited into conversations traditionally reserved for adults. And something powerful happened. Young people stopped being passive recipients of health messages. They became contributors.

Their lived experiences began shaping policy briefs, priorities and recommendations designed to improve the food environments they navigate every day.

The change was not confined to meeting rooms. It began appearing in classrooms. Students started doing something many adults rarely do. They turned food packets around. They read nutrition labels before buying snacks. They questioned marketing claims that promised ‘healthy’ or ‘natural’.

They learnt why foods high in fat, sugar and salt are promoted so heavily, how advertising quietly shapes their choices, how to recognise ultra-processed foods, and why these foods can affect both physical and mental health.

Some took those conversations home. Others shared them with classmates. Many became advocates for healthier eating within their schools and communities. 

This is what nutrition literacy looks like when it moves beyond textbooks.

Increasingly, evidence shows that simply telling children what makes a healthy diet is rarely enough. Young people need practical skills: how to read food labels, question marketing messages, make informed choices and influence those around them.

Programmes that build confidence and critical thinking are far more likely to create lasting behaviour change than those focused only on information.

Schools, where children spend nearly 12,000 hours during their formative years, offer one of the greatest opportunities to build these life skills. Creating healthier school food environments, strengthening nutrition education and giving students opportunities to lead are increasingly being recognised as essential investments in India’s future health.

The timing could not be more important.

India is witnessing a steady rise in obesity and other diet-related non-communicable diseases among children and adolescents. At the same time, the growing consumption of ultra-processed foods is contributing not only to overweight and obesity, but also to undernutrition by displacing nutritious foods from children’s diets.

As these products become more accessible and are marketed more aggressively through digital platforms, they continue to shape the food choices of young people every day.

The challenge is enormous. But so is the opportunity.

India is home to one of the world’s largest adolescent populations. If even a fraction of these young people become informed consumers, critical thinkers and advocates for healthier food, the impact could extend far beyond their own plates.

It could influence families. Schools. Communities. And eventually, public policy itself.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson emerging from the Let’s Fix Our Food initiative. Young people do not need to wait until adulthood to become changemakers. Sometimes, change begins with something as simple as asking a teenager a question no one had thought to ask before.

‘What would help you eat healthier?’ The answers are no longer sitting idly in survey forms.

They are shaping conversations, informing policies and inspiring a generation to believe that healthier food environments are not something created for them, but something they can help build themselves.

Dr Monika Arora is vice president, health promotion and research, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and Tina Rawal is senior research scientist, PHFI 

Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth