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"Pure Opinions"
Food Guidelines in Schools
It was a great day someone had the commonsense to try addressing New Zealand's obesity epidemic at the source. Such was the thrust of the School Food Guidelines introduced by the Labour Government on 1st June 2008.
It was much complained about by some schools but adopted by most. According to an Education Review Office report more than 90 percent of schools had been meeting the guidelines.
And what sensible piece of legislation - where food and beverages are sold on schools' premises, only healthy options were to be made available.
Once National came into office in October 2008 work began on scrapping the Food Guidelines despite advise from the Ministry of Health on 30 January 2009:
"Numerous studies have shown poor nutrition and health adversely affects educational achievement, and Maori and Pacific students are especially vulnerable in this respect. For example in a recent sudy of seven South Auckland secondary schools, 58% of students were found to be overweight or obese. The same study reported that tuck shops were the primary source of lunch for around half these students."
The Guidelines were duly scrapped - schools are free to sell junk food - fizz, highly caffienated energy drinks, potato chips, donuts, pies and sausage rolls - and many are.
Love or hate the Labour government, it is true to say that they weren't afraid to take leadership on issues such as this one. We clearly need our goverments to set the tone for issues and behaviours - schools can't seem to manage it on their own.
But National don't care - and with the effect of such a move being most detrimental for Polynesian students, I'm almost tempted to read racism into it.
So where does that leave us? It means that more tax payers money gets tied up on this obesity problem as the hoard of ambulances arrive at the bottom of this large and heavy cliff.
Posted by Robert Glensor on 17th September, 2009 | Comments | Trackbacks
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