Food was in the news last week highlighting a woeful lack of vision and leadership. If the consequences weren’t so tragic, it would be funny. They represent a failure of the industrial food system and of the health and political orthodoxy.
1. More sugar?
The Ministry of Primary Industries wrote to the sports drink manufacturer SOS Hydration warning that “a food sold as an electrolyte drink base must contain no less than 50g/L (grams/litre) and no more than 100g/L of various sugars”. That’s a minimum of 10 teaspoons of sugar! SOS Hydration only contains 10 g/L exposing them to a $100,000 fine.
The SOS director Tom Mayo claims MPI’s food code is based on discredited science. You can read and hear more about this at Radio NZ. The SOS website also explain the science behind their products.
2. Junk food advertising
When it comes to advertising, the deck is stacked. On the one hand, you have the smartest marking minds crafting messages for greatest impact. On the other hand, you have children, docile from perhaps hours of viewing and impressionable. A recipe for manipulation. And what are they being sold? Junk food. Recent research published in the Public Health Nutrition Journal analysed over 10,000 advertisements on 3 channels in New Zealand. About 1800 were about food. More than 1200 contained products that, according to the World Health Organisation, should not be marketed to children. Nearly 90 percent were shown at peak viewing times for children.
The lead researcher, Dr Stefanie Vandevijvere, calculated 2 million impacts per hour between six and seven p.m., based on the number of ads and the number of children watching. The new advertising code will probably have no impact on these figures. Read and hear more about this at Radio NZ
This video features U.S. advertisements but they products and ads. are similar here. So are the catatonic stares.
3. Dementia on the rise
At the other end of life, dementia is on the rise. Over 60,000 people suffer from dementia in New Zealand and this is expected to triple in the next 30 years (Radio NZ).
The WHO is about to a draft Global Action Plan for combating dementia. Here is the draft. There are seven actions. To the cynical eye, they look more like a plan to increase health and research budgets than to make a significant difference.
For example, there was no mention of nutrition in the document, only 2 references to food – and that was about the daily sustenance rather than any thing about therapeutic values and no mention of inflammation.
Somehow, the food policy miss isn’t working. The regulators are going after the wrong people.
Aotearoa Food Policy Network 
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