HEALTHY FOOD ENVIRONMENT COALITION URGES PASIG CITY TO UPHOLD ORDINANCE PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM JUNK FOOD ADVERTISING

Students from Bagong Ilog Elementary School present their visual map of food advertisements they encounter on the road to school as part of the Weight a Minute, Galaw Bulilit NutriCamp activity held on December 2, 2025, to spark conversations on how marketing shapes children’s food choices.

Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines – The Healthy Food Environment (HFE) Coalition is calling on the Pasig City Government to resist pressure from food industry giants and to uphold City Ordinance No. 20, s. 2025 or the Healthy Food Environment Ordinance, which bans unhealthy food and beverage advertisements in schools and children’s spaces.

The ordinance was hailed as a landmark step in protecting children’s health and rights. However, after its passage, representatives of the food industry met with city officials to question the ordinance. The city government is now set to deliberate on Proposed Ordinance No. 72-2025 which seeks to suspend the measure—a move that public health advocates warn would undermine hard-won progress and delay lifesaving interventions.

“The ordinance is a promise to Pasigueño families that the spaces where their children learn and play will be free from manipulative junk food advertising,”said Atty. Sophia San Luis of ImagineLaw, secretariat of the HFE Coalition. “To suspend or weaken it now would mean turning their backs on children and putting corporate profits ahead of their health and future.

The coalition emphasized that the ordinance directly responds to alarming trends in childhood obesity and poor nutrition, and that they strongly object to the suspension of Ordinance No. 20, calling for its swift and immediate implementation.

According to the 2023 National Nutrition Survey, one in seven Filipino school-aged children is overweight or obese, a crisis fueled in part by aggressive marketing of unhealthy food and beverages.

According to the 2021 National Nutrition Survey, 21.6% of Pasig City’s school-aged children aged 5-10 years old were overweight and obese. In response, the city government launched the Weight a Minute, Galaw Bulilit NutriCamp, a program designed to help children adopt healthier habits and combat obesity. However, making children solely responsible for their health, without creating an environment that makes healthy choices easy, will not work, said San Luis.

Pasig has long recognized the need for stronger policies to address childhood overweight and obesity. In 2017, the city enacted Ordinance No. 64 or the Pasig City Healthy Food and Beverage Ordinance, which laid the groundwork for healthier food environments. Ordinance No. 20 builds on this foundation, expanding its provisions and adding clearer rules for enforcement to ensure that children’s spaces are protected from manipulative junk food marketing.

Health and child rights advocates have also voiced strong support for Pasig’s ordinance, stressing that it aligns with global best practices. Countries like Chile have shown that restricting child-directed junk food marketing leads to healthier diets, product reformulation, and reduced exposure to harmful advertising.

“Heart disease begins with habits formed in childhood. Pasig’s ordinance was designed to help children grow up in an environment that supports healthy eating, so that they will not grow up with deadly and debilitating diseases,” Dr. Rodney Jimenez of Philippine Heart Association said. “We call on the city government to implement the ordinance in full—because the health of Pasigueño children should never be negotiable.”

The Child Rights Network (CRN) convenor Aurora O. Quilala also reaffirmed the network’s support to the ordinance: “The legislation promotes healthy diet and reduces the exposure of children to aggressive marketing of unhealthy food and beverages (high in sugar, salt, and fat). This will contribute to preventing childhood overweight and obesity which are risk factors to noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Its implementation is a necessary step toward fulfilling the right of every child to adequate and nutritious food and to the highest attainable standard of health.”

The Coalition is urging the Pasig City Council and the Mayor’s Office to uphold the ordinance in full, reject proposals for suspension or dilution, and continue leading by example for other cities and municipalities—and eventually, national policy.

“Pasig has the opportunity to show the nation that protecting children’s health is non-negotiable,” San Luis added. “The spectres raised by the food industry are speculative, at best, considering that the City has not yet issued guidelines to operationalize the ordinance. But the harms faced by the children of Pasig are real and immediate. To delay lifesaving interventions at the urging of the food industry is to leave children at their mercy.”