Overview
- Consumer Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy announced the initiative at a WHO–Health Ministry event on accelerating action against obesity.
- The draft royal decree would remove ultraprocessed items from meals for hospitalized children and adolescents and from children’s options in hospital cafeterias and public dining areas at health and residential centers.
- It applies minimum nutritional standards that restrict products defined as having complex industrial formulations, such as certain snacks, industrial pastries, sugary drinks and industrial cookies.
- The regulation is designed to guide procurement by setting baseline nutrition and sustainability criteria for food and drink offered in hospitals and care homes.
- The plan builds on the school-canteen decree approved in April 2025, with the full text of the new rule still being prepared and the ministry citing recent evidence, including a broad Lancet analysis, on health risks from ultraprocessed foods.