Advice spot on
People with diabetes weigh on average around 100kg and have been eating unhealthily, but if they can lose about 15kg there’s a good chance they can go off their medication for at least three years or longer, provided the weight loss is sustained on a healthy, balanced diet, he said.
“The thing is it requires support — you need people, family, to support you. You need to have access to decent food, which we do have in
New Zealand, and it must be affordable.”
Many studies have shown healthy food is not necessarily more expensive than processed and fast food but it is more costly in terms of time and energy to plan and shop.
“If you are poor and working at four jobs, you just don’t have the time for meal planning. It’s much easier to buy some fish and chips,” he said.
Many lower socioeconomic neighbourhoods don’t have fruit and vegetable shops, but do have a lot of fast food outlets.
Transnational food companies have a big effect on global and local food systems, including marketing unhealthy food and drink to school children.
The analogy with the tobacco industry often comes up in this context, but Prof Mann thinks most of the Big Food industries are behaving more sensibly now.
“It’s not necessarily because they want to but because there is so much pressure on them. I think they’ve stopped rubbishing the fact that sugar isn’t so good for you.”
Nevertheless, the report of a new global study by Newcastle University in Australia released in August this year says that one in five published researchers reported being pressured by funders to delay, change or not publish their findings of health behavioural studies when they are unfavourable to the funders’ interests.