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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 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 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 Report is about?
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
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 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
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.
Yeah, why are successive governments so hell banned on the idea that obesity is a matter of individual responsibility.
It's a hard question to answer.
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.
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.
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.
Hey, well, that's right.
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
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.
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.
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?
I think they do.
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 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.
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.
Yeah, it does.
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
to choose to make healthy food choices. It's the costs of healthy food in this country are very very high.
What can the government or what can we do about that?
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
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.
Sugar in them. And then you know, it's not.
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 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.
So we know this stuff works well.
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.
Hey, yeah, that's exactly right.
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 other countries or certainly at this you know, subnational state level around the world.
This stuff works.
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.
So there's not a whole lot of reasons, political or substantive why you wouldn't want to implement some of these policies.
What are some of the Foundation's recommendations to the government.
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 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. 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 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.
When was Jamie Oliver's special I remember seeing it on TV and he was redesigning tuck shops in the UK.
Jamie Oliver is questioning the government's commitment to improve school food for all children.
It's been an incredible journey just to kind of take your mind back.
There used to be standards for dog food, but not kids food in school.
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?
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 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, but reducing pressure on public health budgets and you know, potentially unlocking economic productivity as well.
You've mentioned laws in the UK. Are there any other countries that are doing it right?
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.
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?
It is, that's absolutely right.
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 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 many of our communities probably provides a bit of more tax relief for inside of other spaces.
Nah, I think that would be too much evan to enforce and start and I don't know, it assumes like waste of time.
Sugar's not that bad, is it, I don't know.
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.
Yeah. I think it would be pretty good to helping out the assuming the money went to like healthcare. Then I'm on board.
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.
Bit to me? Yeah?
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 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 with with high obesity rates.
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
really no surprise. Could the Grocery Commissioner get involved when it comes to pricing around around healthier foods?
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 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.
So Associate Health Minister Matt Doocy, he's responsible for nutrition, has he commented on any of the recommendations made in this report.
Not that I have seen.
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.
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. 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.