In New Zealand, two in three adults and one in three children are now overweight or obese.
The publication is the first of a series of ‘Food Environment Performance Index’ (Food-EPI) reports that score governments around the world on their actions to support and encourage healthy food choices.
Food environments have come under increasing scrutiny in light of the global rise in the burden of non-communicable diseases and obesity. The Food-EPI reports will put pressure on governments to deliver on the promises they entered into at the UN General Assembly in 2011, and repeated in July 2014, to achieve a series of targets for reducing diet-related diseases including diabetes and obesity by 2025.
While scoring well in some areas, such as regulating ingredients lists and nutrition claims on food packaging, the Food-EPI report finds that the New Zealand government has made very little progress in areas such as:
In 2015, governments will be expected to report to the World Health Organization that they have a fully funded, comprehensive plan to reduce non-communicable diseases, as well as report on progress on reducing marketing of unhealthy food products and reducing saturated fat in foods as part of the WHO’s NCD Monitoring Framework.
Project leader Professor Boyd Swinburn from the University of Auckland and co-chair of World Obesity Federation’s Policy &Prevention group, said: “High-income countries such as New Zealand should be leading the world in progress made to tackle NCDs, but as this research finds, New Zealand is a long way off meeting expectations. Our unique report card shows that while there are some strengths, there are a large number of healthy food policies that still need to be implemented in New Zealand.
“Of most concern is the large number of food policies that were rated as having ‘very little, if any, implementation’. This was especially apparent in the areas of reducing the marketing of unhealthy foods to children and using fiscal policies, like taxes on sugary drinks, to influence food choices.”
The Food-EPI report is the first systematic study on national food policies and is the first of a series of such assessments of food environments to be conducted in countries across the globe.
It’s part of an international network – Informas – which seeks to assess public sector and private sector actions to help halt the rise in obesity and diabetes worldwide, and to monitor food prices, availability and marketing methods.
Informas is supported by the World Obesity Federation and coordinated jointly by the University of Auckland and Deakin University, Melbourne.
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