Recently Barbara attended the Cardiac Society Scientific meeting held in Dunedin – an excellent weekend. The key focus was on the disaster facing our population and consequently the health system from obesity, as NZ now ranks 3rd in OECD. This is now considered more of a problem than smoking for our population, with Type 2 Diabetes at epidemic levels amongst children. Our environment is the key factor: don’t blame the individual – unhealthy choices in our community are visible everywhere and the most telling presentation in the whole 3 days was from Cliona Ni Mhurcha, on PREVENTION as the only way.
3 key measures:
- Taxing unhealthy food and drink – not only saving downsteam 7.4% dealths/yr, but providing NZ Government with the funds to manage it.
- Clear labelling – a traffic light system, which will enable all of us, without nutrition language knowledge, to make better selections and avoid the hidden nasties in processed foods. It also makes producers improve the quality of the contents FAST
- Marketing – currently marketing limitations during “childrens’ viewing times” need to be extended. Internet, street advertisements etc are all 24hrs and aimed at the youn, and also the habit of placing junk food and alcohol stores in lower decile suburbs, close to schools, is of enormous concern.
By having this strong environmental focus on dealing with the obesity drivers, change could happen…. Each of the above are effectively working internationally, so we need to get on board!
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