In May 2004, the World Health Organization adopted a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health at its annual assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, formally linking the global epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease to the worldwide spread of processed and junk foods high in sugar, fat, and salt. The strategy recommended that governments restrict food marketing to children, reformulate products to reduce harmful ingredients, and improve consumer labeling, drawing fierce opposition from the American sugar and food processing lobbies. This WHO declaration marked the first time a major international health body had explicitly identified junk food as a primary driver of chronic disease, elevating the issue from a national to a global public health priority.

The WHO's formal linkage of junk food to global disease patterns entered world poetry through the work of poets from affected regions, particularly from the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, and Latin America where imported processed foods were creating obesity crises. Poets like Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands have written about the importation of junk food into their communities as a form of neocolonial harm, using poetry to document the health consequences of globalized food systems in ways that complement and humanize the statistical language of international health reports.