Obesity challenge: Crack down on junk food ads, takeaway shops, says Helen Clark Foundation
- A third of NZ adults are obese and policies focused on individual responsibility are failing, a new report says.
- Tackling obesity will require cracking down on junk food advertising, the proliferation of takeaways, and bringing in new levies on unhealthy products.
- The Government has not committed to any changes, but says it is ‘actively seeking advice’ on nutrition changes.
I love that the Helen Clark Foundation have the intellectual power to challenge deep issues, they did it recently by pointing out how un-insurable so much of NZs coastline will be thanks to climate change (the solution of course is a new National insurance plan alongside Council buy outs of land) and they have done it again here with this hard hitting attack on Big Sugar and Fast Food Corporations.
We are never allowed to attack Fast Food or Big Sugar for the negative impacts their product cause.
For many in poor areas, the local fast food amusement park is the only recreational space, for time poor and desperate people Fast Food is an immediate dopamine boost in a grim life of depression exacerbated by the food they eat.
Tobacco and Booze pay for the health damage their products cause, Fast Food and Big Sugar never do.
Why do we allow huge corporations the freedom to pollute and not pay an extra dividend on that product for the social harm their product causes?
Human Beings are pre-programmed to seek out fat and sugar, it was a very important evolutionary advantage for our early evolved selves hunting on the African plains.
Those drives are easy to manipulate and in a land of plenty that drive for fat and sugar has triggered an obesity epidemic.
The insanity of the First World being obese while the 3rd World starves should not be lost on any of us.
Obesity doesn’t just cause immense physical damage, it generates a gnawing depression and self loathing that makes the lives of many obese mental torture.
That loss of self-esteem plays out in a million different ways.
Most of them very negative.
So the physical and mental carnage generated by Fast Food and Big Sugar is there, but utterly ignored and never critically analysed.
They need an immediate sugar tax on all soft drinks to help pay for Free Dental for all Kiwis.
They need a vice tax aimed at the final profit margin alongside restrictions for advertising and while we remove GST from Supermarket and groceries food, GST should stay on all Fast Food.
That’s for starters.
In terms of the Obesity issue, we need more subsidies towards gastric sleeve surgery, we need these new generation of weight loss drugs to be available for free and we need a lot more Green Prescriptions that give free Gym membership and physical activity as the medicine.
Fast Food Corporations and Big Sugar Interests have been allowed to peddle their damaging product with zero accountability.
That should stop now.
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Physical Literacy ( walking, running & playing sport) should be way more important in school s than what it is. Helps mental health also
$ Big fast food and sugar corporate s should ‘ chippie in’.and pay tax.
and yet people want the GST taken off food so where will the money come from for the health care ?.At present that is the only tax on these foods .
Obesity rates differ a lot between ethnicities.
There is your clue to the true drivers of obesity, because everybody has the same price, the same advertising, same product labelling, retailing location, etc.
The true tail of this tape is economics, not ethnicity. Economics is the key driver behind most disparities and neoliberal economic policy grows rather than heals this problem.
you really are a ZB drone aren’t you. Go to the US and report back on who the fat fucks are.
There we go again ,putting a race label on something like this .I know and see a hell of a lot of fat white people .Have you not noticed your beloved PM is fast becoming obese .?Lets talk about this as a NZ problem as it is not a brown or white problem its a NZ problem .While we are sticking race labels on everything nothing will be solved .One of the best solutions to this very problem was removed by the current government when they cut the Maori health authority which was set up to tackle the inequity in Maori health by tackling the prevention before cure message .
And while we are talking about the fucken stupid race labeling of everything what % of pedaphiles are Maori ?Oh you dont know aye because most are pakeha and wealthy ones at that .
Unfortunately many of the leaders in the Maori and Pacifica area are overweight.
It’s common among poor white people as well so nationality is not the problem, what we loosely call culture or lifestyle would be my explanation for most obesity. Most jobs are sedentary and the way we live requires significantly less physical effort than a few generations ago while processed food is everywhere. Taxing unhealthy food to reduce demand and pay for health cost sounds like a great idea.
Well there’s plenty of corpulent Pakeha. Look at the US, Australia etc.
Yeah well I’d expect a dope like you to blame the innocent. When you’re broke arse fucked all you want is a reprieve from feeling broke arse fucked so you head to the sugar and fat and the cigarettes and the beer. Anything to escape yourself from feeling like shit. Being overweight is a symptom of a wider issue. Yep. That pun was intended.
There’s this thing called ‘happiness’. It’s an odd state whereby one desires to be reliably ‘happy’. Happy people tend not to be drug addicts or violent or homeless or struggling with a sense of hopelessness or fat.
And what the fuck is it about any sugar or fat pimp being able to lobby OUR politicians? They can walk into OUR parliament’s lobby and shout ” Oi fuckers! I got sugar. And fat. How about that? You want some? How about I give you some money too? Then, if you want mo money I can guarantee a reliable supply? Spin that money baby.
I could also write that our economy’s born of corruption, that our MMP politicians are dirtier than a public school hanky and that evil, manipulative psychopaths exploit our vulnerabilities to make mo money baby by buying our politicians.
You want to curb the enthusiasm of crooked politicians taking what amounts to bribes like this cunt? Then ban lobbying to start with.
RNZ 2023
“Billionaire Graeme Hart has donated $700,000 to parties on the right of the political spectrum in the past two years.
Hart, who is New Zealand’s wealthiest man, has donated personally and through Rank Group Limited, a company he is a director and sole shareholder of.
The Rank Group consists of four companies, including Graham Packaging, Pactiv Evergreen, Reynolds Consumer Products and CarterHolt Harvey. It told RNZ it had no comment to make regarding its contributions to political parties.”
Let’s dwell on that statement for a moment.
“It told RNZ it had no comment to make regarding its contributions to political parties.”
But rank group? Excuse me? Hello? Excuse me? Fuck you. And can you remember that those political parties that you fiddle with that you won’t comment on? Yeah, they’re ours. Not yours so fuck off!
See what I mean?
A total ban on lobbying. Effectively immediately. ( Yeah right….) Then, mandate voting. Our politics and our governance are 100% corrupt which, in this instance, is enabling sugar pimps to make awesome people fat, sick then dead. Aye boys?
as are many leaders in the pakeha world ,Jerry Brownlee comes to mind and the PM has put on at least 10 kg in the last year .
Mate spend an hour sitting in the local shopping mall and see the scale of the problem .Then take off your anti Maori glasses and look at it as a nz PROBLEM THAT WE ALL NEED TO FIX .
Interesting that these purveyors of junk food have been outed as donors to trump’s election campaign as well. It wouldn’t be surprising if they ensure silence here, in a similar way.
It calls for a massive boycott of their products. But people have to know who they are before they’d be interested. And even then, as the article says, we have evolved to seek out fat and sugar.
It makes a miserable life slightly bearable.
Who is causing the miserable lives?
Just a big vicious cycle, isn’t it.
It’s a good reason to have cooking/home economics taught at school. Basic nutritional meals on a budget.
All our mothers/grandmothers knew how to make nutritional meals whilst money was tight.
In this day and age, males too need to know how to cook also, schools are the best places for kids to learn if parents are not good at cooking.
Obesity is largely driven by cheap fast carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, cereals etc) that are metabolically identical to just eating straight sugar, which, when combined with seed oils (used in margarine, deep fried food etc) that are literal poison and cause rampant inflammation in your arteries is why human health has been steadily declining in since the 1960’s.
I detest behavioral taxes.
lol – had to laugh when Trump made RFK sit down on the plane with McDonalds in front of him – I wonder if he ate it or was held down while Grimace gave him one.
I’d support a sugar tax – I can afford it.
Obesity is only the tip of the iceberg. Type 2 diabetes, poor gut health, the growing connection between low nutrional density and degenerative brain disease, processed foods are the culprit. Processed sugar is particularly harmful. And its everywhere. Let’s not play the blame game’ easy as it is to do. Let’s not point a finger at this ethnicity or that. Let’s not simply say it’s free choice. If Fast Food and Big Sugar won’t come to the party, if they won’t heed the evidence, and why should they in a capitalist system where growing market share and making profit comes before public health concerns, then time
for serious regulation. A sugar dax combined with gst reduction on high nutrional density food would benefit the public health system in spade fulls, and quite frankly improve everyone’s wellbeing. Too hard? Insufficient political will?Fear of litigation? Not enough evidence? Misinformation by those with vested interests? Little wonder the current state of affairs is unsustainable.
Once again a poverty driven situation .Untill everyone can afford to buy the right foods and supermarkets are prevented from selling the bad food we will have a problem .Most of the highly processed food is imported so do a Trump and place a 100% tariff on them every year till they are no longer affordable .
Poverty? No doubt a factor. But I don’t buy it as an excuse. A cottage pie with some in season veges, even frozen the experts say. A cassirole or stew, not three canned stuff. Surely that is affordable even for those on a tight budget. But preparing and eating/sharing a meal involves a bit more than the cost of the ingredients. Priorities. A routine. Yep, many of our grandparents knew how to stretch the budget. Money was tight – but even then some found a way to gamble it away or piss it up against a wall. And few fast food outlets back in the day. Soft drinks a real luxury. People had time to eat together.
Yes, I agree, poverty a factor but individual choice, priorities, will power, health literacy, family life all in the mix.
Good article Martyn
Once upon a time being fat was considered shameful as your body was outing you for gluttony or boozing.
Less sedentry screens, more physical work and join the ‘slow food’ movement.
“the new generation of weight loss drugs for free” Really? Create a big pharma customer for the rest of the obese person’s life.
https://youtu.be/YUvjdmjdbiw?feature=shared