Science Media Centre

More than half of three and four-year-old children in Auckland and Waikato attend early childhood centres where food is provided daily, but most providers don’t serve food that meets nutrition guidelines, according to University of Auckland research. Published this week in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, the research surveyed over 250 […]

Independent experts are unconvinced by unpublished research reporting a link between expecting mothers’ levels of folate – a vitamin pregnant women are encouraged to take – and autism in children. Pregnant women are encouraged to take the B vitamin folate, as deficiency is linked to the development of lethal or debilitating birth defects. However researchers […]

The UK have announced plans to introduce a tax on sugary drinks. Should New Zealand follow suit? In the newly announced 2016 Budget, the UK Government outlines plans to “introduce a new soft drinks industry levy to help tackle childhood obesity, by incentivising companies to reduce the sugar in the drinks they sell, to fund […]

The Government has this week launched the public awareness campaign for the new Health Star Rating front-of-pack labelling, aiming to help consumers make healthier choices. The labels have been quietly appearing on a range of packaged food products over the last year; around 1,000 products with Health Star Ratings are now on supermarket shelves. The […]

Unchecked climate change will hit food production so severely that an extra half a million people could die through changes in diet and bodyweight in 2050, compared with a world where emissions are curtailed. The figure comes from a new UK study published today in the leading medical journal the Lancet. Taking into account projected […]

The release of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)’s review of meat and cancer risk has  dominated the news media. The World Health Organization agency evaluated the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat and announced their findings this week. The Working Group of 22 experts determined the consumption of […]

A wide-ranging series of initiatives designed to tackle childhood obesity was unveiled by the Government yesterday afternoon. The package is made up of 22 initiatives, which are either new or an expansion of existing programmes. The focus is on food, the environment and being active at each life stage, starting during pregnancy and early childhood. […]

The most processed packaged foods are also the least healthy, according to new research examining hundreds of products sold in New Zealand supermarkets. The authors of the study, published in the journal Public Health Nutrition, found that the large majority (83 per cent) of packaged products available fell into the category of  ‘ultra-processed.’ These products […]

The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Prof Sir Peter Gluckman, spoke this morning on the Paul Henry Show discussing the issue of taxes on unhealthy food. You can watch the interview by clicking on the image below.

Health-related food taxes and subsidies could improve diets and reduce deaths from diet related disease in New Zealand, according to a new study. In a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers estimated the effects of five different tax and subsidy scenarios using data on food expenses and health and showed that, for […]