Dr Phillip Baker

The recipient of the 2025 Mary Kirk Fellowship is Dr Phillip Baker. Due to unforeseen delays, his lecture was presented in February 2026 and his paper is forthcoming.

Dr Baker is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and Horizon Fellow, at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. A leading Australian expert on Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs), he was an adviser to UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Report 2025 – Feeding Profit and co-author of the 2025 report Ultra-processed foods and children.

In his lecture, Dr Baker shows how UPFs are increasingly shaping early nutrition in Australia, displacing breastfeeding and home-prepared complementary foods and undermining healthy diets. He highlights the challenges for families and governments in addressing the growing dominance of UPFs, given emerging evidence linking diets high in UPFs to poorer diet quality, dental caries, obesity and mental ill-health. He argues that the expansion and intensive marketing of commercial baby foods, especially sweetened purees, squeezable pouches, toddler milks, snacks and ready-to-eat convenience products, reflect structural changes in the food system. He analyses the corporate political activity of the infant and young child food industry in Australia, and regulatory gaps that have enabled continued marketing of UPFs. To support healthier diets for infants and young children, Dr Baker outlines essential policy options for Australian governments. He envisages a different path, one where governments regulate effectively, communities mobilise and healthier diets are accessible and affordable for all.