Kathryn Bradbury: Auckland University School of Public Health expert on New Zealand reaching 2025 smoke-free targets

There's little hope New Zealand can reach its 2025 smoke-free targets. 

The annual New Zealand Health survey has confirmed rates are stagnating just below 7 percent, with 12 percent of adult Kiwis vaping daily.

Auckland University School of Public Health's Kathryn Bradbury says this smoking plateau - follows 10 to 15 years of really good progress.

"The goal is to get under five percent - I mean, we're pretty close. But it looks unlikely."

The study also shows a third of adults are obese - and just 7 percent eat the recommended daily veggie intake. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, the annual New Zealand Health Survey shows that we're
stagnating when it comes to getting people off the cigies.
Apparently seven percent of us are still smoking. Not me,
you wouldn't believe that. And twelve percent of kiwis in
our daily vapors, which is three times more than five
years ago. One in three adults are abeese, and just
seven percent of adults eat the daily recommended amount of vegetables.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Catherine Bradbury is from the School of Population Health at
Auckland University and with us HI Catherine h. Does that
vaping numbers surprise you?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
It does a bit. It's you can see that. It's
it's definitely climbing up.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Why does it surprise you?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, we have made I mean, yes, we're sort of
stagnating a little bit on the daily smokers, but we
have made really good progress over the last ten to
fifteen years getting our smoking numbers down. But at the
same time, more recently, in particularly our the number of
people vaping is growing.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah. Do you think twenty twenty five smoke free is
not going to happen?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah? The goal is to get under five percent. I
mean we're pretty close. Yeah. It looks unlikely that we're
going to get there.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I'll tell you what, I'm surprised by that only seven
percent of people eat the recommended helping of vegetables. Does
that surprise you?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, it's pretty woeful. Yeah, it is. It is surprising.
I mean it's it's really hardly anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
What is the recommended helping? Is it three vegetables a day?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
No, it's actually five to six, so it is quite
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Did you eat yours today?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Did I eat mine today?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Do I count a tomato?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Catherine?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Because this is contribusial, Yes, you can count. I've had
a avocado and I've had a tomato. I think that's
me done.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. Yeah, well we've still got dinner to go, so
we'll get a few more in there.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Will you make it by the end of the day. Also, Catherine,
isn't this a load of bs?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Like?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
You don't actually need to eat six different helpings of
vegetables in one day, do you? Which makes me.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
No, No, it isn't made up. But the servings are
kind of small, like half a potato counts, as you know,
a serving, so it's not Yeah, so if you have
a potato, that's two servings already so, but still it's
indicating really that people are not you know, getting their
vegetables or fruit. Even fruit is two servings a day

(02:33):
and less than half of our population this meeting that.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, okay, what's going on with the obesity?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, you know, obesity is still a real problem in
New Zealand kind of linked I guess to fruit and vegetables.
You know, like we're not really eating healthily in New
Zealand and a lot of that is just we've got
such an availability of you know, really highly processed foods

(03:01):
that are high in all our you know, salt and
sugar and fat easily available from the supermarket, and you know,
fruit and vegetables actually can be pretty expensive.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah. Yeah. On the bright side, about half of us
are doing enough exercise, which is like two and a
half hours of moderate intensity activity in the last week.
That's not bad, is it.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, it's not bad Again, of course, you know, like
there's a there's a large portion who aren't doing enough,
but you know we are, yeah, there are. You know,
it's better than our some of the indicators. Yeah. So yeah,
we have got you know, about half, just under half
doing the recommended amount. But of course yeah, more. You know,

(03:44):
there's lots lots more, lots of people who could be
doing more exercise as well.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Catherine, thanks very much, really appreciate you time. It's Katherine
Bravery from the School of Population Health at Aukland University.
Do you know what I'm I'm I'm starting to come
to the view that any of these numbers that they
tell you have to strike in a day, there's just
a load of ber Remember when they said to you, like,
we all brush out eath twice a day, right, because
we're grown up, so we do it because we've been told.
Now it turns out you only have to do it
once a day. I always knew that I did it

(04:09):
two times anyway because gross, But you only have to
do it once a day. That was obvious, wasn't it.
And they say you've got to have eight glasses of
water a dight. You know, that's bs that's made up.
And the ten thousand steps a day is literally made
up by the people who were like, how many steps
ten thousand? That sounds yeah, we'll do that, Yeah, it's
actually only seven thousand. And when they say to you
have to have six different vegetables and two different fruits.

(04:31):
That's also just made up nonsense. You know that. So anyway,
I'm not giving you a free pass. I'm just telling
you go easy on your go easy on yourself, you
will be okay. And if you are, if you do
all of the things that I said, if you don't
do it, you'll end up just like me. And that's
exactly where you want to be sounding like this.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
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