November 24, 2024 • 16 mins
New research shows a third of New Zealand adults are obese – and policies focused on individual responsibility are failing.
A Helen Clark Foundation report suggests tackling obesity will require cracking down on junk food advertising, the proliferation of takeaways, and bringing in new levies on unhealthy products.
So, is the era of placing the blame on the individual going to be a thing of the past? And can the government to anything to curb obesity in this country?
Today on The Front Page, Helen Clark Foundation executive director Murray Bruges is with us to discuss.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kyota.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New research
shows a third of New Zealand adults are obese and
policies focused on individual responsibility of failing. A Helen Clark
(00:27):
Foundation report suggests tackling obesity will require cracking down on
junk food advertising, the proliferation of takeaways, and bringing in
new levies on unhealthy products. So is the era of
placing the blame on the individual going to be a
thing of the past? And can the government do anything
(00:51):
to curb obesity in this country today? On the front page,
Helen Clark Foundation Executive Director Murray Brouge is with us
to discuss. First off, Murray, can you give me a
brief overview of what the Junk Food and Poor Policy
(01:12):
Report is about?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yes, certainly. Our report is about how poor policy around
unhealthy food is hurting New Zealanders and New Zealand as
a whole in terms of our health, our productivity, and
the two billion it costs our public health system to
treat diseases associated with obesity, like type two diabetes, like
high blood pressure, like heart disease, with around one in
(01:36):
three New Zealanders living with obesity. We've got the third
highest rates in the OECD, and that's estimated to cost
US nine billion loss productivity, things like reduced life expectancy,
lower workforce participation, in lower wages, that kind of thing.
And it also costs US two billion in public health
spend treating the diseases associated with obesity. So we really
(01:59):
do have a problem them with unhealthy food in this country.
But I think more than that, the report is about
the proven policies that we could implement today if we
wanted to, that would make a major difference to these challenges.
These are policies that have been shown in comparable countries
to reduce obesity, to improve productivity, and to reduce the
(02:19):
strain on the public health budget. So I think despite
the fact that we've allowed unhealthy food to do quite
a lot of damage in New Zealand, we actually have
a great opportunity to improve things and we could get
started today.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, why are successive governments so hell banned on the
idea that obesity is a matter of individual responsibility.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
It's a hard question to answer.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
What our report focuses on is the opportunity in front
of us, if we chose to implement policies that have
been shown to work elsewhere. You know, not every country
sticks steadfastly to this idea that it's only about individual responsibility.
There are a range of policies that have been implemented
elsewhere with in some cases really really great rates of success.
(03:02):
You know, that show that you can reduce consumption and
that'll flow through to improvements in overall health and as
I say, reduce pressure on the public health spend and potentially,
you know, overall improvements in economic productivity. So there really
is a pretty strong case for action here.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
What's happening in New Zealand at the moment? Can you
tell me why one out of three adults are obese?
I mean, it's not always about trusting people to make
the right choices.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Hey, well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I mean what this report does as it looks at
what we call the food environment and you zeealand or
the commercial food environment, which reflects the fact that we
have a lot of unhealthy foods, you know, on our streets,
on our supermarket shelves, we've got some pretty sophisticated marketing
of unhealthy food on our airways, and we don't have
much in the way of regulation around that regulation that
(03:57):
you stay to see being implemented in other countries. We've
allowed an environment to develop where it's very hard for
people to make healthy choices about the food they ate.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
The UK sugar attacks officially the soft drinks industry levy,
implemented in twenty eighteen, was proven transformative and combating excessive
sugar consumption. According to reports, children's sugar intake from soft
drinks dropped by approximately fifty percent, while adults also reduce
their consumption by a third.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You mentioned New Zealand is the third highest rate of
obesity in the OECD, and you mentioned related illnesses cost
the health system two billion a year and that nine
billion dollars in loss productivity. Do those figures surprise you
at all?
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think they do.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I mean that two billion and public health spend for
the diseases related to obesity. That's eight percent of our
whole health budget. As I understand that. You know, if
we could reduce that, that would free up lot of
budget for other priorities in the public health sector, like
elective surgery. That is a lot of money and likewise
(05:07):
nine billion lost productivity that would be really really helpful
for a New Zealand economy that's doing it tough right now.
So you know, the opportunity here is pretty significant.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Does the cost of healthy options being astronomically more expensive
than those naughty ones have anything to do with it?
I mean, we do live in a country where a
bag of grapes is fifteen dollars.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And that's one of the compounding factors here. In addition
to not having some of the regulations in place that
we think should be and that are you know, in
other countries that we like to compare ourselves to, We've also,
for a complicated range of reasons that the report doesn't
go into, we've also seen the price of healthy food
grow much faster than the price of unhealthy food, and
that's just another thing that makes it hard for people
(05:52):
to choose to make healthy food choices. It's the costs
of healthy food in this country are very very high.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
What can the government or what can we do about that?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Though it's a government, you know, one of the main
duties of a government is to look out for and
improve the health of its population. So our report outlines
a few things that the government should be doing. One
of which is a sugar levy, which you would you
would probably start that as other countries have on sugary drinks,
and what you're doing there is it's not about adding
(06:25):
another tax. And if you design this thing well and
again we've got other examples that we can draw on
countries that look and operate a lot like ours, where
they've been able to do this in a way that
means that what you're really trying to do is incentivize
and encourage the manufacturers to reformulate their products in a
way that to include less or will potentially no.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Sugar in them. And then you know, it's not.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
About getting consumers to pay more, and it's certainly not
about revenue raising. It's about changing the formulations of these
products to to essentially make them less unhealthy, to to
have less sugar in them, and that it's got all
kinds of benefits that flow through, obviously in terms of
obesiing and some of the didase that associated with it,
but also in terms of things like dental carries, and
(07:09):
that's one of the things that you've seen in the
UK is a big reduction since they've implemented this. I
think they call the sugary drinks industry levy, they've seen
a big reduction and hospitalizations of children needing serious dental treatment.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So we know this stuff works well.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
There are now more than a hundred countries around the
globe that have introduced some kind of variation on the
sugar tacks. So surely it's not seen as something as
radical as it may have in the beginning.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Hey, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Perhaps twenty years ago, you know, you might have argued
that individual choice was the way to go. But with
the evidence now one about the damage unhealthy food and
food that's very very high in sugar or perhaps salt
and fat does to the population. And two with the
effect of policies that we're starting to see increasingly in
(08:02):
other countries or certainly at this you know, subnational state
level around the world.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
This stuff works.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It should probably be a lot less confronting to politicians,
and perhaps it was twenty years ago. And then the
other really important point there is to know, you know,
there there's been opinion polling on this showing that I
think twice as many New Zealanders support some form of
sugar levy as opposed it outright. And then the numbers
for New Zealanders who want to see some controls on
marketing of junk food, especially to children, are overwhelmingly positive.
(08:32):
So there's not a whole lot of reasons, political or
substantive why you wouldn't want to implement some of these policies.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What are some of the Foundation's recommendations to the government.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, so we think there should be a sugar levy
on I think you probably start with soft drinks. We
think there should be controls on the marketing of unhealthy food,
especially to children. Again, in the UK, you've just seen
the implementation of a watershed on advertising unhealthy food. I
(09:16):
think it's between five thirty in the morning and nineteen
at night, so you're not exposing children to that. In
New Zealand, we've seen research that shows that children are
exposed to adverts for unhealthy food sixty eight times per day,
So we should really look seriously at putting some rules
around that and reducing children's exposure to advertising for unhealthy food.
(09:38):
We also think the government could lead by example and
implement stronger, clearer policies for providing healthy food across the
millions of meals that are provided on government properties. For
they schools, hospitals, army canteens, prisons every year. There are
bits and pieces of policies around that, but having direction
(10:00):
around the fact that all of those meals should be healthy,
would would set a really good example, would have some
pretty positive effects on health outcomes in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
When was Jamie Oliver's special I remember seeing it on
TV and he was redesigning tuck shops in the UK.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Jamie Oliver is questioning the government's commitment to improve school
food for all children.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
It's been an incredible journey just to kind of take
your mind back.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
There used to be standards for dog food, but not
kids food in school.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Now we want to give to the public delivery of
the standard that must have been over ten years ago.
Now when that kind of revolutionary thinking came about, why
haven't we done it yet?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, Look, it's a great question. There have been some
attempts at at the Helen Clark government. Helen Clark led
government of two thousand and eight did put some rules
in place requiring schools to serve only healthy food. They
were subsequently repealed. I think there is a fear in
this country or among the countries' political leaders, of being
seen to be you nanny states telling people how to
(11:06):
live their lives. But that's not really what this is about.
It's about making it easier for people to make healthy
food choices. And as I say, it doesn't take much
looking around the rest of the world to see that.
You know, most of these other countries have moved on.
They've realized how effect of some of these policies can be,
not only in improving the health outcomes across the population,
(11:28):
but reducing pressure on public health budgets and you know,
potentially unlocking economic productivity as well.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
You've mentioned laws in the UK. Are there any other
countries that are doing it right?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I understand there are some really effective policies and much
of Latin America, And then there are various state level
policies around the place, including in the United States, where
where these policies have been implemented and have been found
to be effective.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Isn't it a known fact that there are more concentrations
of say, fast food outlets and lower socioeconomic areas. I mean,
how do we stop that from happening?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
It is, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Some research done a few years ago by the Helen
Clark Foundation found that there could be up to three
times the concentration of unhealthy food outlets and the lowest
decile communities compared to the highest desil communities. Look, one
of the things that this report calls for is to
give councils more authority, more control to regulate the number
(12:27):
or the concentration of fast food outlets and within the
communities that they look after. That could be one way
of doing it, much in the same way that they
have that power to some extent with bottle stores with
the sale of alcohol. You could give councils that power,
and that would be one way of helping reduce what
is a very high prevalence of unhealthy food outlets. And
(12:49):
many of our communities probably provides a bit of more
tax relief for inside of other spaces.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Nah, I think that would be too much evan to
enforce and start and I don't know, it assumes like
waste of time.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Sugar's not that bad, is it, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Good thing, good thing, yeah, for healthy It's proven in
other countries, right, it's more healthier for people, right, So yeah,
good thing.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah. I think it would be pretty good to helping
out the assuming the money went to like healthcare. Then
I'm on board.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I know when talking about this subject, some people say, Look,
why don't people just make healthier choices? I choose to
eat vegetables and fruit every day? Why can't everyone do that?
And there's different variables to that, right, there's price and
there's advertising. I mean, can you explain that a little.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Bit to me? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Look, I mean I think you've touched on to the
important things there. What it really comes down to, I
think is we've made it quite hard to make healthy
food choices in this country. We don't have the same
rules that are a lot of other countries have adopted
that are designed to make it easier to eat healthy.
And then to your point, New Zealand's got expensive food
relative to other countries as it is, but healthy food
(14:10):
is particularly expensive and has increased in price a lot
in recent years. As a graph and a report that
illustrates this quite clearly. So we've just made it too
hard to eat healthily in this country, and then that
rebounds on everybody. We're less healthy as a country, we're
less productive, and we've got to spend that much more
of our limited health budget treating the diseases that come
(14:32):
with with high obesity rates.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, and it's really no surprise that the vegetables and
fruits in this country are astronomically more expensive, There's no
doubt about it. I remember seeing a viral recipe for
a cucumber salad. People were making this cucumber salad and
you need about five cucumbers, and I remember reading the
comments from those people in New Zealand saying cucumbers are
like eight dollars each. Now, this is impossible. So it's
(14:58):
really no surprise. Could the Grocery Commissioner get involved when
it comes to pricing around around healthier foods?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
What the policy options are there people to you know,
you've seen proposals to take gst off fruit and veggies.
You know, there are other ways of the social supermarkets
or other people have proposed subsidies for healthy food Those
are all potentially, at least some of those options could
potentially be effective. But our reports really focused on some
(15:28):
of those other things that we've talked about, the levy
on sugary beverages, on banning marketing to children, and on
thinking about how the government can lead by example, given
that it provides so many meals over the course of
the year, on all all its properties.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So Associate Health Minister Matt Doocy, he's responsible for nutrition,
has he commented on any of the recommendations made in
this report.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Not that I have seen.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
We have recently shared an advanced copy of the report
with him, and I've offer briefed him and Health Minister
Ritty as well. So I really look forward to engaging
with them on this if they're interested in effective policy
and policy that's informed by very clear evidence, and I
hope they'll be interested in the recommendations of this report.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Thanks for joining us, Murray, Thank you, Chelsea. That's it
for this episode of The Front Page. You can read
more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld
dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by
Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer.
(16:35):
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow
for another look behind the headlines.
Kyota.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New research
shows a third of New Zealand adults are obese and
policies focused on individual responsibility of failing. A Helen Clark
(00:27):
Foundation report suggests tackling obesity will require cracking down on
junk food advertising, the proliferation of takeaways, and bringing in
new levies on unhealthy products. So is the era of
placing the blame on the individual going to be a
thing of the past? And can the government do anything
(00:51):
to curb obesity in this country today? On the front page,
Helen Clark Foundation Executive Director Murray Brouge is with us
to discuss. First off, Murray, can you give me a
brief overview of what the Junk Food and Poor Policy
(01:12):
Report is about?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yes, certainly. Our report is about how poor policy around
unhealthy food is hurting New Zealanders and New Zealand as
a whole in terms of our health, our productivity, and
the two billion it costs our public health system to
treat diseases associated with obesity, like type two diabetes, like
high blood pressure, like heart disease, with around one in
(01:36):
three New Zealanders living with obesity. We've got the third
highest rates in the OECD, and that's estimated to cost
US nine billion loss productivity, things like reduced life expectancy,
lower workforce participation, in lower wages, that kind of thing.
And it also costs US two billion in public health
spend treating the diseases associated with obesity. So we really
(01:59):
do have a problem them with unhealthy food in this country.
But I think more than that, the report is about
the proven policies that we could implement today if we
wanted to, that would make a major difference to these challenges.
These are policies that have been shown in comparable countries
to reduce obesity, to improve productivity, and to reduce the
(02:19):
strain on the public health budget. So I think despite
the fact that we've allowed unhealthy food to do quite
a lot of damage in New Zealand, we actually have
a great opportunity to improve things and we could get
started today.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, why are successive governments so hell banned on the
idea that obesity is a matter of individual responsibility.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
It's a hard question to answer.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
What our report focuses on is the opportunity in front
of us, if we chose to implement policies that have
been shown to work elsewhere. You know, not every country
sticks steadfastly to this idea that it's only about individual responsibility.
There are a range of policies that have been implemented
elsewhere with in some cases really really great rates of success.
(03:02):
You know, that show that you can reduce consumption and
that'll flow through to improvements in overall health and as
I say, reduce pressure on the public health spend and potentially,
you know, overall improvements in economic productivity. So there really
is a pretty strong case for action here.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
What's happening in New Zealand at the moment? Can you
tell me why one out of three adults are obese?
I mean, it's not always about trusting people to make
the right choices.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Hey, well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I mean what this report does as it looks at
what we call the food environment and you zeealand or
the commercial food environment, which reflects the fact that we
have a lot of unhealthy foods, you know, on our streets,
on our supermarket shelves, we've got some pretty sophisticated marketing
of unhealthy food on our airways, and we don't have
much in the way of regulation around that regulation that
(03:57):
you stay to see being implemented in other countries. We've
allowed an environment to develop where it's very hard for
people to make healthy choices about the food they ate.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
The UK sugar attacks officially the soft drinks industry levy,
implemented in twenty eighteen, was proven transformative and combating excessive
sugar consumption. According to reports, children's sugar intake from soft
drinks dropped by approximately fifty percent, while adults also reduce
their consumption by a third.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You mentioned New Zealand is the third highest rate of
obesity in the OECD, and you mentioned related illnesses cost
the health system two billion a year and that nine
billion dollars in loss productivity. Do those figures surprise you
at all?
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I think they do.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I mean that two billion and public health spend for
the diseases related to obesity. That's eight percent of our
whole health budget. As I understand that. You know, if
we could reduce that, that would free up lot of
budget for other priorities in the public health sector, like
elective surgery. That is a lot of money and likewise
(05:07):
nine billion lost productivity that would be really really helpful
for a New Zealand economy that's doing it tough right now.
So you know, the opportunity here is pretty significant.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Does the cost of healthy options being astronomically more expensive
than those naughty ones have anything to do with it?
I mean, we do live in a country where a
bag of grapes is fifteen dollars.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And that's one of the compounding factors here. In addition
to not having some of the regulations in place that
we think should be and that are you know, in
other countries that we like to compare ourselves to, We've also,
for a complicated range of reasons that the report doesn't
go into, we've also seen the price of healthy food
grow much faster than the price of unhealthy food, and
that's just another thing that makes it hard for people
(05:52):
to choose to make healthy food choices. It's the costs
of healthy food in this country are very very high.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
What can the government or what can we do about that?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Though it's a government, you know, one of the main
duties of a government is to look out for and
improve the health of its population. So our report outlines
a few things that the government should be doing. One
of which is a sugar levy, which you would you
would probably start that as other countries have on sugary drinks,
and what you're doing there is it's not about adding
(06:25):
another tax. And if you design this thing well and
again we've got other examples that we can draw on
countries that look and operate a lot like ours, where
they've been able to do this in a way that
means that what you're really trying to do is incentivize
and encourage the manufacturers to reformulate their products in a
way that to include less or will potentially no.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Sugar in them. And then you know, it's not.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
About getting consumers to pay more, and it's certainly not
about revenue raising. It's about changing the formulations of these
products to to essentially make them less unhealthy, to to
have less sugar in them, and that it's got all
kinds of benefits that flow through, obviously in terms of
obesiing and some of the didase that associated with it,
but also in terms of things like dental carries, and
(07:09):
that's one of the things that you've seen in the
UK is a big reduction since they've implemented this. I
think they call the sugary drinks industry levy, they've seen
a big reduction and hospitalizations of children needing serious dental treatment.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
So we know this stuff works well.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
There are now more than a hundred countries around the
globe that have introduced some kind of variation on the
sugar tacks. So surely it's not seen as something as
radical as it may have in the beginning.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Hey, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Perhaps twenty years ago, you know, you might have argued
that individual choice was the way to go. But with
the evidence now one about the damage unhealthy food and
food that's very very high in sugar or perhaps salt
and fat does to the population. And two with the
effect of policies that we're starting to see increasingly in
(08:02):
other countries or certainly at this you know, subnational state
level around the world.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
This stuff works.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It should probably be a lot less confronting to politicians,
and perhaps it was twenty years ago. And then the
other really important point there is to know, you know,
there there's been opinion polling on this showing that I
think twice as many New Zealanders support some form of
sugar levy as opposed it outright. And then the numbers
for New Zealanders who want to see some controls on
marketing of junk food, especially to children, are overwhelmingly positive.
(08:32):
So there's not a whole lot of reasons, political or
substantive why you wouldn't want to implement some of these policies.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
What are some of the Foundation's recommendations to the government.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, so we think there should be a sugar levy
on I think you probably start with soft drinks. We
think there should be controls on the marketing of unhealthy food,
especially to children. Again, in the UK, you've just seen
the implementation of a watershed on advertising unhealthy food. I
(09:16):
think it's between five thirty in the morning and nineteen
at night, so you're not exposing children to that. In
New Zealand, we've seen research that shows that children are
exposed to adverts for unhealthy food sixty eight times per day,
So we should really look seriously at putting some rules
around that and reducing children's exposure to advertising for unhealthy food.
(09:38):
We also think the government could lead by example and
implement stronger, clearer policies for providing healthy food across the
millions of meals that are provided on government properties. For
they schools, hospitals, army canteens, prisons every year. There are
bits and pieces of policies around that, but having direction
(10:00):
around the fact that all of those meals should be healthy,
would would set a really good example, would have some
pretty positive effects on health outcomes in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
When was Jamie Oliver's special I remember seeing it on
TV and he was redesigning tuck shops in the UK.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Jamie Oliver is questioning the government's commitment to improve school
food for all children.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
It's been an incredible journey just to kind of take
your mind back.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
There used to be standards for dog food, but not
kids food in school.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Now we want to give to the public delivery of
the standard that must have been over ten years ago.
Now when that kind of revolutionary thinking came about, why
haven't we done it yet?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah, Look, it's a great question. There have been some
attempts at at the Helen Clark government. Helen Clark led
government of two thousand and eight did put some rules
in place requiring schools to serve only healthy food. They
were subsequently repealed. I think there is a fear in
this country or among the countries' political leaders, of being
seen to be you nanny states telling people how to
(11:06):
live their lives. But that's not really what this is about.
It's about making it easier for people to make healthy
food choices. And as I say, it doesn't take much
looking around the rest of the world to see that.
You know, most of these other countries have moved on.
They've realized how effect of some of these policies can be,
not only in improving the health outcomes across the population,
(11:28):
but reducing pressure on public health budgets and you know,
potentially unlocking economic productivity as well.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
You've mentioned laws in the UK. Are there any other
countries that are doing it right?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I understand there are some really effective policies and much
of Latin America, And then there are various state level
policies around the place, including in the United States, where
where these policies have been implemented and have been found
to be effective.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Isn't it a known fact that there are more concentrations
of say, fast food outlets and lower socioeconomic areas. I mean,
how do we stop that from happening?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
It is, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Some research done a few years ago by the Helen
Clark Foundation found that there could be up to three
times the concentration of unhealthy food outlets and the lowest
decile communities compared to the highest desil communities. Look, one
of the things that this report calls for is to
give councils more authority, more control to regulate the number
(12:27):
or the concentration of fast food outlets and within the
communities that they look after. That could be one way
of doing it, much in the same way that they
have that power to some extent with bottle stores with
the sale of alcohol. You could give councils that power,
and that would be one way of helping reduce what
is a very high prevalence of unhealthy food outlets. And
(12:49):
many of our communities probably provides a bit of more
tax relief for inside of other spaces.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Nah, I think that would be too much evan to
enforce and start and I don't know, it assumes like
waste of time.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Sugar's not that bad, is it, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Good thing, good thing, yeah, for healthy It's proven in
other countries, right, it's more healthier for people, right, So yeah,
good thing.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah. I think it would be pretty good to helping
out the assuming the money went to like healthcare. Then
I'm on board.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I know when talking about this subject, some people say, Look,
why don't people just make healthier choices? I choose to
eat vegetables and fruit every day? Why can't everyone do that?
And there's different variables to that, right, there's price and
there's advertising. I mean, can you explain that a little.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Bit to me? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Look, I mean I think you've touched on to the
important things there. What it really comes down to, I
think is we've made it quite hard to make healthy
food choices in this country. We don't have the same
rules that are a lot of other countries have adopted
that are designed to make it easier to eat healthy.
And then to your point, New Zealand's got expensive food
relative to other countries as it is, but healthy food
(14:10):
is particularly expensive and has increased in price a lot
in recent years. As a graph and a report that
illustrates this quite clearly. So we've just made it too
hard to eat healthily in this country, and then that
rebounds on everybody. We're less healthy as a country, we're
less productive, and we've got to spend that much more
of our limited health budget treating the diseases that come
(14:32):
with with high obesity rates.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, and it's really no surprise that the vegetables and
fruits in this country are astronomically more expensive, There's no
doubt about it. I remember seeing a viral recipe for
a cucumber salad. People were making this cucumber salad and
you need about five cucumbers, and I remember reading the
comments from those people in New Zealand saying cucumbers are
like eight dollars each. Now, this is impossible. So it's
(14:58):
really no surprise. Could the Grocery Commissioner get involved when
it comes to pricing around around healthier foods?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
What the policy options are there people to you know,
you've seen proposals to take gst off fruit and veggies.
You know, there are other ways of the social supermarkets
or other people have proposed subsidies for healthy food Those
are all potentially, at least some of those options could
potentially be effective. But our reports really focused on some
(15:28):
of those other things that we've talked about, the levy
on sugary beverages, on banning marketing to children, and on
thinking about how the government can lead by example, given
that it provides so many meals over the course of
the year, on all all its properties.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So Associate Health Minister Matt Doocy, he's responsible for nutrition,
has he commented on any of the recommendations made in
this report.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Not that I have seen.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
We have recently shared an advanced copy of the report
with him, and I've offer briefed him and Health Minister
Ritty as well. So I really look forward to engaging
with them on this if they're interested in effective policy
and policy that's informed by very clear evidence, and I
hope they'll be interested in the recommendations of this report.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Thanks for joining us, Murray, Thank you, Chelsea. That's it
for this episode of The Front Page. You can read
more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld
dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by
Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a sound engineer.
(16:35):
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow
for another look behind the headlines.
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