And the Helen Clark Foundation has come up with a new report calling on politicians to take a new direction when it comes to problems with obesity and the health problems related to obesity.
A third of New Zealand adults are obese and even if we want to split hairs and play fast and loose with the BMI - All Black front rowers are technically obese! Everybody knows you can be skinny fat! You know you can all protest as much as you like, but the fact is too many of us are unhealthy because we're fat and that leads to a long, miserable and expensive relationship with the country's health system.
Obesity is now the leading risk factor for death and disability in this country. The Helen Clark Foundation Report, ‘Junk Food and Poor Policy’ says successive governments have primarily approached obesity as a matter of individual responsibility.
And I would add to that, that society also sees obesity as a moral failing, which complicates matters. So if you're fat, you've got poor self-control, haven't you? Oh dear, you're not trying hard enough. Oh dear, you're clearly a person with lax morals, all that kind of judginess goes on as well.
The foundation argues that successive governments have done far too little to address the underlying issues of what causes obesity. Only a fraction of school canteens meet the nutritional guidelines. The concentration of takeaways is highest in the most deprived suburbs in New Zealand, so the people who have the least amount of time to prepare nutritional meals, find themselves bombarded with takeaway stores just around the corner.
The Helen Clark Foundation wants to see a healthier food environment, stricter rules for advertising junk food, giving local government the power to control new unhealthy food outlets (similar to bottle stores and how they're allowed to operate), and making the health star rating on food packaging mandatory.
Regulation can work – soft drinks levy introduced in the UK in 2016, has led to a 35 percent reduction in the total sugar sold over four years and lowered hospital admissions for dental treatment. So that has got to be good news.
The Foundation’s also calling for embedding healthier food across hospitals, schools, daycares and the like, and adopting and expanding new treatments like weight loss drugs.
For a while, it was the bariatric surgery. I know so many people who've had it. And it's worked for the most part, for them, like overwhelmingly, it's worked for them. Now it’s Ozempic and the other related type injectables are said to be an absolute game changer when it comes to obesity.
Obesity is now the leading risk factor for death and disability in this country. The Helen Clark Foundation Report, ‘Junk Food and Poor Policy’ says successive governments have primarily approached obesity as a matter of individual responsibility.
And I would add to that, that society also sees obesity as a moral failing, which complicates matters. So if you're fat, you've got poor self-control, haven't you? Oh dear, you're not trying hard enough. Oh dear, you're clearly a person with lax morals, all that kind of judginess goes on as well.
The foundation argues that successive governments have done far too little to address the underlying issues of what causes obesity. Only a fraction of school canteens meet the nutritional guidelines. The concentration of takeaways is highest in the most deprived suburbs in New Zealand, so the people who have the least amount of time to prepare nutritional meals, find themselves bombarded with takeaway stores just around the corner.
The Helen Clark Foundation wants to see a healthier food environment, stricter rules for advertising junk food, giving local government the power to control new unhealthy food outlets (similar to bottle stores and how they're allowed to operate), and making the health star rating on food packaging mandatory.
Regulation can work – soft drinks levy introduced in the UK in 2016, has led to a 35 percent reduction in the total sugar sold over four years and lowered hospital admissions for dental treatment. So that has got to be good news.
The Foundation’s also calling for embedding healthier food across hospitals, schools, daycares and the like, and adopting and expanding new treatments like weight loss drugs.
For a while, it was the bariatric surgery. I know so many people who've had it. And it's worked for the most part, for them, like overwhelmingly, it's worked for them. Now it’s Ozempic and the other related type injectables are said to be an absolute game changer when it comes to obesity.
Basically, and putting into really fundamental terms, the makers of Ozempic have said people can not know when they're full – not all people, but there are a lot of people who don't know when they're full. Their bodies have no trigger switch that says, oh, that's enough, stop. With the injection, they take the injection and they have something to eat and their body says that's enough, we've got enough nutrition to get us through, and so you know when to stop. Which sounds amazingly easy.
And if that is all it is, yay, it will make a huge difference. I mean, obviously following the the logic that David Seymour applied to Pharmac, if you can get people onto Ozempic or similar, a weight drug that regulates metabolism and regulates appetite that has got to be better in the long run than paying all of the health bills further down the track.
I would love to hear from those of you who have thought about weight, struggled with weight, done something about weight. It occupies far too much of our time, but it is a very, very real problem.
I mean, look at the figures. Obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of death and disability in this country. We need to do something about it. What do we do?
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Actually Kerre, I think I've got this one sorted. Stop eating so much.
Everyone should watch "what are we feeding our kids?" BBC doco. available free on U tube.
I had Barrie Davis' opinion until I watched this excellent programme. Makers of junk food deliberately have additives in their food to make them more palatable and AddICTIVE. Much research is put into this but in the Western World very little research is done into the poor nutrition and effects junk food has even on the brain structure which is actually similar to indulging in addictive activities or taking illegal drugs. To target selectively children with their seductive advertising could only be described as evil.
It is a mistake to consider obesity alone but also dental health, diabetes and a myriad of other diseases caused by overall poor nutritional foods..
There needs to be also a revolution in all medical training concerning education in nutrition rather than the obsession with pharmaceuticals , we now have.
The Amish in the States had a low death rate from covid probably because of their simple whole food diet. They refused the vaccination.
I take Gaynor's point. Manipulation and propaganda are key issues and there are things we can do about that.
Something we can do is stop paying for the medical treatment of the obese. Doing so shapes wrong behaviour as I described in Behaviourism 101.
Here: https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/08/barrie-davis-behaviourism-101.html
There is no point doing the science if we then ignore it once it is completed. Paying people for obesity is not going to stop them eating, it is giving them money for more food.
The pandemic saw the rise of the sentiment "my body, my choice". But it also established the principle that making a bad choice has consequences. No jab, no job, successfully prevented the scientifically illiterate from collapsing the Health Service, But now that Service faces an even greater threat. Lifestyle induced illness is overwhelming the system as people transfer the cost of their risky behaviour onto the State,. Membership of society delivers certain rights. It also carries certain duties. Like a person's duty to minimise the demands they make on the resources of the State. So it's time the State started charging to treat illness that arises as a consequence of any dereliction of that duty. What the army calls self-inflicted wounds. The army treats them then throws them in the brig. It's in the interests of society that even the ignorant should be treated, but they should be required to then contribute to the cost of their treatment. Their body, their choice. Fair enough. But also their choice, their problem. We applied that logic to antii-vaxxers in the pandemic, and smokers have always contributed to their inevitable health care through excise duty, So lets start pushing the boundaries. Free health care is no longer a right; it's a privilege that has to be earned.
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