Today childhood obesity is widely recognized as a major global health problem in both developed and developing countries. The slow build-up of childhood obesity awareness over the last twenty-plus years reached an accelerated pace beginning in the early 2000s as witnessed through the confluence of increased conferences, NGO initiatives, and public awareness. This awareness is coupled with the alarming data that shows the drastic rise of childhood obesity rates in developed countries since the 1960s and the growing childhood obesity rates in developing countries since the 1980s. Along with this build-up, a consensus is emerging that the study of childhood obesity should cease focusing on a sole medical interventionist model or single levels of analysis. Building upon Glass and McAtee’s call for an integration of the natural, behavioral, and social sciences to study childhood obesity, we address how a global value chains (GVC) approach is a useful analytic framework to conduct multilevel research. Researchers who use a GVC paradigm to study childhood obesity would identify how some of the main international and corporate factors related to changing food production, technology, and development strategies are linked to consumption patterns around the world. These consumption patterns may allude to unhealthy diets and the risk factors associated with the increased prevalence of childhood obesity.

We outline in this paper our case for using a GVC approach to study childhood obesity. First, we review the evidence regarding the increased prevalence of childhood obesity in developed and developing countries. Second, we use Glass and McAtee’s article as a foundation to conceptualize the multiple determinants of childhood obesity that are positioned on varying levels of analysis (global, macro, meso, micro, and ‘underwater’). With their framework, we begin to piece together how a GVC analysis can be an effective model to capture specific interactions and linkages that connect the levels. Particular attention is given to the United States to demonstrate how a multilevel analysis may be visualized. The United States case highlights a variety of determinants linked to two broad variables: a deleterious change in food consumption patterns (e.g., an increase in fast foods, processed foods, soft drinks, and snacks), driven by powerful corporate marketing campaigns oriented to youth; and a shift to a more sedentary lifestyle. Breaking down the determinants and levels of the U.S. provides a case example to compare developing countries to. Moreover, it highlights the strength of lead firms (e.g., food and beverage manufacturers and fast-food chains) in shaping local consumption patterns. These lead firms then become a key factor in connecting local food production and technological changes in the United States to an overall global shift. Third, we diagram the key analytic terms and segments of a GVC framework. A series of global processes, such as international trade, foreign direct investment, and the diffusion of Western cultural norms, are examined in terms of their impact on changing consumption patterns in developing societies and their connection to a GVC approach.