What do you make of this OIA where a few months ago a work plan was proposed to, "...address the significant and inequitable impacts of inadequate nutrition, inactivity and obesity" on health outcomes between the Ministry of Health, Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora?
It's a great OIA request to reveal how inflexible the government is, and the go-slow approach on taxing SSBs. We can see that the relationship of dietary nutrition and ultraprocessed (UPFs) foods with mental illness is still outside government framing. It's politically unpalatable.
Outside the framing also, is a cohesive approach of investing in education to support a pivot away from UPFs and to clearly iterate many of the known biological pathways of microbiome disruption from dietary UPFs, and knock on effects from the mitochondrial level upwards. It's interesting stuff that people like knowing. Patronising media stances downplay how curious kids - and the public really are, and what forms of knowledge interest people.
People love learning, but the government is failing to clearly articulate the relationship of chronic illness, from metabolic health, cancer, heart health to fatigue, mental illness and skin conditions, the immune system with the nature and extent of UPFs in the diet.
This can start with investment in cooking and education for pregnant mums and their partners, through kindergarten, and primary school. Home economics in secondary education can become compulsory, with funding for vegies and meat and vegetable protein rather than the sugar/wheat underfunded framework home eco teachers have to deal with. Then our public TV can do the same thing.
So, any work plan or policy position that doesn't want to get into the guts of what the scientific literature demonstrates, and isn't accompanied by meaningful, science-based education. Most scientists in this space are articulate and very focussed on great info that the public 'gets' - but they're 'news space' is relegated to spotty, short sound bites, it doesn't need to be this way. So any campaign with the current knowledge status and political position of officials is going to be uncompelling and wishy washy.
During COVID-19 PSGR discussed the relationship of food to chronic disease and illness. The government have yet to tie food to health in any convincing way that is anything other than a wet fish approach. We wrote this in October-November 2021, drafted quickly because of the urgency in attempting to communicate that the answer to a respiratory virus was much, much more than an injection that injected the instructions to the body to configure a spike protein. https://psgr.org.nz/sars-cov-2-covid-19/238-the-burden-of-poverty-intergenerational-racism
What do you make of this OIA where a few months ago a work plan was proposed to, "...address the significant and inequitable impacts of inadequate nutrition, inactivity and obesity" on health outcomes between the Ministry of Health, Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora?
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/information-release/h2023028274_response.pdf
It's a great OIA request to reveal how inflexible the government is, and the go-slow approach on taxing SSBs. We can see that the relationship of dietary nutrition and ultraprocessed (UPFs) foods with mental illness is still outside government framing. It's politically unpalatable.
Outside the framing also, is a cohesive approach of investing in education to support a pivot away from UPFs and to clearly iterate many of the known biological pathways of microbiome disruption from dietary UPFs, and knock on effects from the mitochondrial level upwards. It's interesting stuff that people like knowing. Patronising media stances downplay how curious kids - and the public really are, and what forms of knowledge interest people.
People love learning, but the government is failing to clearly articulate the relationship of chronic illness, from metabolic health, cancer, heart health to fatigue, mental illness and skin conditions, the immune system with the nature and extent of UPFs in the diet.
This can start with investment in cooking and education for pregnant mums and their partners, through kindergarten, and primary school. Home economics in secondary education can become compulsory, with funding for vegies and meat and vegetable protein rather than the sugar/wheat underfunded framework home eco teachers have to deal with. Then our public TV can do the same thing.
So, any work plan or policy position that doesn't want to get into the guts of what the scientific literature demonstrates, and isn't accompanied by meaningful, science-based education. Most scientists in this space are articulate and very focussed on great info that the public 'gets' - but they're 'news space' is relegated to spotty, short sound bites, it doesn't need to be this way. So any campaign with the current knowledge status and political position of officials is going to be uncompelling and wishy washy.
For example, this document is the same - it doesn't have teeth to ensure Māori have access to whole food. https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/pae-tu-hauora-maori-strategy-july2023.pdf It mentions 'equity' 29 times and food only 3 times. It's performative because it fails to iterate that poor diets drive many forms of illness *all at once*.
During COVID-19 PSGR discussed the relationship of food to chronic disease and illness. The government have yet to tie food to health in any convincing way that is anything other than a wet fish approach. We wrote this in October-November 2021, drafted quickly because of the urgency in attempting to communicate that the answer to a respiratory virus was much, much more than an injection that injected the instructions to the body to configure a spike protein. https://psgr.org.nz/sars-cov-2-covid-19/238-the-burden-of-poverty-intergenerational-racism
Thanks for directing me to this OIA.
Great to have someone with nouse airing this stuff.