The Role of the Food Environment in the Health of Children and Adolescents
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 254
Special Issue Editor
Interests: food environment; food and nutritional security; food and nutritional education and nutritional assessment of populations
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Rapid changes in individuals’ economic, political and environmental status and lifestyle have established new paradigms and changes in the global food system. Thus, changes in access, practices and food choices have began to play a crucial role in the health of individuals, especially children and adolescents. Health problems, such as nutritional deviations, during childhood and adolescence can have lifelong impacts on health and well-being. This makes these groups a top priority for governments and states.
The current agro-industrial food system, through food environments, has influenced individuals’ food choices; this is especially evident among children and young people, with a high availability of ultra-processed foods that are rich in fat, sugar, salt and poor in micronutrients, and a low supply of natural and unprocessed foods. This had promoted an increase in the prevalence of nutritional deviations. Several countries are facing the "double burden" of malnutrition, dealing with infectious diseases and malnutrition, as well as a rapid increase in chronic non-communicable diseases and obesity, to epidemic proportions.
In this sense, studies that consider local contextual characteristics are necessary to identify specific characteristics that may not be observed in global units of analysis, in order to adopt public policies based not only on individual childhood and adolescent issues, but also on local social, commercial, territorial and structural determinants of healthy eating.
This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) aims to provide reflections and discussions on the role of the food environment in child health. This Special Issue welcomes the submission of manuscripts that address this area of research, with the aim of providing the reader with an overview of the latest findings, analyses of previously published data, new opinions and perspectives, and methods and protocols (when relevant). For this reason, this Special Issue welcomes the submission of all types of articles accepted by IJERPH.
Dr. Juliana Souza Oliveira
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- children and adolescents
- food consumption
- food environment
- food system
- healthy eating
- malnutrition
- obesity
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