The FINANCIAL — Unhealthy diet plays a role in 11,000 deaths each year in New Zealand, and healthier diets are important in preventing common diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. The most effective ways to improve New Zealanders’ healthy food choices will come under scrutiny in a major five year research programme due to start soon, according to the University of Auckland.
“Supporting people to make healthier food choices has important health benefits,” says Dr Ni Mhurchu. “We aim to produce world-leading comprehensive evidence on effective strategies to support healthier diets,” Mhurchu added.
The research programme was able to go ahead after successfully gaining nearly $5 million funding, in the Health Research Council’s latest round, to investigate effective interventions and policies to improve population nutrition and health, according to the University of Auckland.
“Our research will provide vital information directly relevant to national and international policies on the most effective and cost-effective ways to improve population diets and health,” she says.
“For example, governments throughout the world, including New Zealand, are proposing to implement front-of-pack nutrition labelling systems,” says Dr Ni Murchu. “But there is almost no evidence regarding the impact of front-of-pack labels on the foods people buy,” Mhurchu added.
“Similarly, little is known about children’s exposure to non-TV advertising and there has been no quantification of children’s exposure to the full range of marketing media,” Mhurchu added.
“We live in obesogenic environments, and pricing of food is a major factor,” she said. “Soda taxes, saturated fat taxes and healthy food subsidies are increasingly proposed as a policy response to poor nutrition, and determining the health effect (and cost) of these, and other price mechanisms, is a key policy issue. At the heart of answering these important policy questions of our time are price elasticities. They are woefully inadequate. We propose to improve this situation,” she added.
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