A professor in population health has told Stuff’s daily podcast Newsable the government is “ignoring the facts” when it comes to policies that could tackle the country’s shocking obesity rates.
“New Zealand is falling behind,” Boyd Swinburn, from the University of Auckland, said, pointing to Latin America as a leading example.
“They have [a] sugary drinks tax, they have junk food taxes, they have marketing restrictions to children – they’re taking the problem seriously. We just don’t care about it. If you look at our policies, we’re doing nothing.”
But has the policies in Mexico for example worked?
Sure they reduce the product being taxed, but do people just substitute? The public health activists cite models of reduced obesity but almost never refer at actual real obesity data. So I checked the OECD data.
Click to view
Click to view
What a huge success. Gone from a 34% obesity rate to 45%.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
7 comments:
Remarkably little seems to be researched about just exactly what the gargantuans seen in supermarkets (and at food banks) actually eat. I guess because there is no money in it and it is near impossible to monitor behaviour without modification. Some school time teaching that we are what we eat, and that we eat to live bot vice versa, woud likely be effective
People are overweight in Mexico. More so than before. Quite large.
Corn syrup in soft drinks. Surgery and fatty (vegetable fat not lard anymore) in Pan dulce.
Huge amounts of fried foods at "breakfast time" morning work breaks. Uber eats for lunch. Constant shuffling from food stand to work place with arms ladden. They get a lot of pleasure from eating. It's not a good thing though. It is also the rising affluence of the middle class. Middle class getting more with more money in their pockets.
Sugar tax is dumb. Education is better. Stop with the soft drinks first. Surgery snack second, greasy food try to cutail. High energy low nutrition food too.
Start with the young ones. Fat parents have fat kids.
Waddle, waddle. All our education about healthy food, personal responsibility etc. should start at school as home is not working. But no, we just make excuses. Sugar is so cheap the tax would need to be huge to be a deterrent. It is so hard to lose weight it is best not to gain it.
I know people who are diabetic and still eat cake and ice cream every day. One lady had blood sugar at 32 and felt so bad she called the ambulance, more than once and was taken to hospital for days. I know what she ate as I bought her groceries. The average intelligence of the average human is not that high. Everyone knows sugar is not good for us.
MC
Sugary. I won't repeat it 100 times though.
I read that anything more than 1 teaspoon of sugar converts to fat.
Treat sugar as poison and the kilos will drop off . One bottle of fruit juice equals the sugar in six oranges or 6 apples , with the fibre gone only the sugary juice remains . Would you eat six pieces of fruit in the time you quaff a fruit juice . Probably or defintely NOT.
As Disraeli once opined - "lies, damned lies, and statistics." I still firmly believe we would be better off if sugary drinks and junk food were taxed more. After all, we have no problem doing that with tobacco products and alcohol. Shame we also haven't really managed to do it with illicit drugs
Rarotonga has established a sugar tax that significantly increases the price of drinks and food stuffs that contain sugar. It seems to work..
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