WE NEED A STRATEGY: Niki Bezzant says New Zealand should follow Ireland’s lead to tackle obesity.
Countries like Ireland and Brazil are leading the way when it comes to sensible government-led strategies to help solve obesity.
I RECENTLY attended the launch of Diabetes New Zealand Auckland’s mobile diabetes screening van. This is an excellent service which will take screening for diabetes into at-risk communities. They’ve already identified people with diabetes – both type-1 and type-2 – who did not know they had the disease. About 30 per cent of the people getting tested are found to have diabetes or prediabetes.
That’s pretty scary. Diabetes is at epidemic levels in New Zealand, and it’s getting worse, despite the excellent work being done by organisations like Diabetes NZ. Fifty Kiwis every day are diagnosed with diabetes. Within seven years it will cost the country a billion dollars a year. We could use 50 more vans like the Auckland one around the country.
Unfortunately, there is no funding for this. Like many of the fantastic grass-roots projects to try to fight the obesity epidemic, this diabetes-screening programme is not government funded. Nor is it part of any overall nationwide government-led strategy. That’s because we don’t have one.
Prime Minister John Key spoke at the van launch and emphasised again that he sees education as the only solution for our obesity crisis.
I couldn’t help thinking that not many of the people at the coal face of health would agree with him. Yes, education is important. But education and awareness programmes can work so much better when they are one part of an overall strategy – a strategy that includes funding for education with sensible policies aimed at making our obesogenic environment less so. It’s great to identify prediabetes – but trying to do it in an environment that’s designed to make us unhealthy is an uphill battle.
On the positive front, overseas there are some countries making real progress.Ireland recently introduced its Healthy Ireland plan – a whole-of-government approach to helping the Irish become healthier. Along with education and community support, priorities include a 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, front-of-pack nutrition labelling and restrictions on marketing of food and drinks to children. Ireland and New Zealand have many parallels – including a similar-sized obesity problem.
Brazil recently unveiled new easy-to-understand, food-based healthy-eating guidelines with a comprehensive policy on healthy food in schools, which includes making sure schools source their ingredients from local farms.
Brazil also has a ban on advertising aimed at kids. What both countries have done as a cornerstone to their plans is to set national targets. Brazil’s targets are to halve obesity in kids by 2022, to stop the rise of obesity in adults, to increase fruit and vegetable consumption and to reduce salt intake. If policy makers are looking for ideas on where to start in dealing with this crisis, there are two fantastic examples. I’d love to see us make a plan, set some targets and do the same here.