Science Media Centre

Research from the University of Otago shows that it’s not just what children are eating at school that is of concern. A study has revealed that children are eating as, or more, unhealthily outside of school than in school itself. An excerpt: (read in full here) “”Children are more likely to have hot chips and [...]

The 60 Minutes programme last Wednesday and again last night featured a story about former All Black Captain Taine Randell, who returned to his home town of Flaxmere in Hawkes Bay to promote a range of community based initiatives to help improve the health and wellbeing of the local population. One initiative was to promote [...]

Felicity Wolfe writes for the Waikato Times about food technologist Erik Arndt’s combination of frozen meat and vegetables as a form of fast food. His latest developments include a stirfy and a bolognese, and the idea came from realising many people were buying fast food because cooking food from scracth was too much effort. An [...]

ONLINE MEDIA BRIEFING: Tues 13 July 9 am (NZT) As part of its focus on improving public health, the Maori Party is preparing to introduce a bill calling for GST on healthy foods to be scrapped. The bill is provisionally scheduled to receive its first reading in parliament on July 21. Click below to play [...]

Research published in The Lancet Oncology today shows a strong causal link between obesity in Asia-Pacific people, and an increased risk of dying from cancer. While an increased risk of death from cancer has been linked with obesity in Western populations, little research until now has looked at any effects in Asia-Pacific populations. Now, a [...]

Alan Perrott writes in the New Zealand Herald about David Reubenheimer, a Kiwi nutritional ecologist who is travelling the world finding out how organisms acquire the nutrition they need to survive. From this, the scientist hopes to understand our propensity for all things junk food, and the optimum nutritional balance for us. An excerpt: (read [...]

Marika Hill writes in the Manawatu Standard about research from Massey University which suggests that pregnant women should take multivitamins in order to ensure that their babies do not suffer from vitamin deficiencies. Vitamin deficiencies in the womb can have negative effects on babies’ development, and babies whose mothers are vitamin deficient are more likely [...]

Rebeccah Todd writes in the Waikato Times about research being undertaken by Lincoln’s Plant & Food Research scientists into how the composition of food, as well as how we eat it, affects the extent to which it satisfies us. They have discovered, for example, that chewing less and taking bigger bites is probably better for [...]

Anna Rushworth writes in the New Zealand Herald about a meeting later this month in which experts will decide whether food manufacturers should be compelled to list the amounts of trans fatty acids in their food. The move would apply across New Zealand and Australia, and is being considered due to their wide use and [...]

Kiran Chug of the Dominion Post reports that a one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition could soon become far more personal, thanks to nutrigenomics. Nutrigenomics is the study of how our genetic make-up affects which foods are good for each of us, personally, and also how different foods and micronutrients can in turn affect our DNA. An [...]