The Obesity Health Alliance and First Steps Nutrition Trust have updated the ‘Healthy Early Years Diets: Achieving the Best Start in Life‘ which outlines the next steps the government can take, to create healthier food environments and help ensure the UK’s youngest children and babies grow up healthily.
The early years are a critical window for shaping lifelong health. During this time, children develop foundational food preferences and behaviours that influence their growth, learning, and long-term wellbeing. Ensuring access to nutritious diets in these formative years helps set children on a healthy trajectory, equipping them to thrive at school and beyond. This will be key to delivering not only key government health priorities but also reducing inequalities and enabling economic growth.
However, despite growing evidence and public concern, there remains a glaring absence of robust initiatives to foster healthy diets in the early years. This is a critical gap that demands urgent political leadership. This government has a unique opportunity to enact meaningful changes to shape the health and wellbeing of future generations.
In this joint updated position statement we present a clear, achievable set of evidence-informed and cost-effective steps that will measurably improve the nutritional quality of diets in the early years. We call on the government to implement these measures alongside broader efforts to tackle poverty and food insecurity, with particular attention to the heightened vulnerability of pregnant women, parents, and families with babies and young children.
Read the joint position paper here
We thank Alliance members First Steps Nutrition Trust for their help in developing this position statement and the wider OHA membership for agreeing priorities for this vital area, to ensure our babies and young children grow up healthily.
For more information, please contact kat.jenner@obesityhealthalliance.org.uk