It addresses obesity, food marketing and also food as a way of expressing children’s and young people’s identities (family, class, cultural, generational). Discussing key issues that in research and thinking about food, including how policies tackling obesity are framed, it draws across work from Childhood and Youth Studies and Psychology to challenge the rhetoric of 'healthy choices' and consider why it's essential to go beyond the individual to understand systems and environments that currently fail children and their health.

The following video explores the concepts covered in this course.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Identify and analyse the importance of food in various aspects of children’s and young people’s lives
• Understand the impact of food marketing on children from pre-schoolers to teenagers
• Critically discuss the idea of ‘healthy choices’ when it comes to food
• Analyse the need for a rights based approach to children, young people and food.