Speaker: Are there opportunities within the Government’s childhood obesity plan?
229 Responses
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HORansome, in reply to
I'm not sure why we're meant to be subsidising milk producers; even with my vegan hat off, the supposed health benefits of milk area widely disputed by nutritional experts, whilst we live in a region of the world where lactose intolerance is a serious problem for large sectors of our multicultural society. That, and the fact dairy production is environmental destructive and mostly takes place on land confiscated from Māori seems to rule out the idea we should be subsidising dairy...
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Sacha, in reply to
I might be missing something
Unfortunately I must agree.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
That’s not something you blame individual people for being in.
And I don't - that why we as a society have to change that aspect of our society - the environment. Defending the right to have a vending machine at the school and all-you-can-eat KFC under a banner of personal choice/responsibility isn't helping at all.
Neither is making fun of sardines in a public forum (lol).
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Sacha, in reply to
I’ve had a helluva week
sorry
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Danielle, in reply to
Oh, and you have to eat your toast with a knife and fork too. That way you won’t end up on dialysis.
What about the green jelly? Isn't that basically just sugar? WHAT IF I GET ON THE DIALYSIS??
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Sacha, in reply to
Defending the right to have a vending machine at the school and all-you-can-eat KFC under a banner of personal choice/responsibility isn't helping at all.
And I have seen nobody doing that here. You may be arguing furiously with natural allies?
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I'm just doing the maths here. On the links Katherine gave, a serving of chips (which cost me exactly $1 about 40 minutes ago) contains nearly a thousand calories, whereas the sardine can contains nearly 200. So we get 5 times as much calories in the chips, for 20c less. You could probably make up the difference with 9 slices of bread, but I don't think a standard loaf has 36 slices in it. You'd need 2. Presumably the toast has some kind of spread, perhaps butter, margarine, or maybe blood squeezed from a local stone. Better factor in how much of that you spread on 36 slices of bread - then we've got a valid comparison in cost to the chips pile. There's about 20 minutes of preparation in all of that too - even with my 4-at-a-time toaster. Most of my own time would be spent buttering the toast, and stretching the 10grams of fish across each slice.
I'm being a bit silly, of course. I'm sure the idea wasn't to eat the equivalent in nutrition to the fish and chips, but to eat less. Which is why it's also less fattening. It's probably more like 2 slices of bread each, for a grand total of maybe 500 calories apiece, at a cost of around $2 each if you really take all the monetary costs into account and don't count your own efforts as a cost.
Of course I didn't buy only the chips - $1 chips each is far too much. That was $1 chips in total. I also got chicken nuggets, deep fried wings and wontons. A fair hit of protein there, and admittedly a lot of fat. Total cost: $8.80. There would be upwards of 2000 calories in that pile. It could have fed all of us. But it didn't because I personally had some other stuff (I don't like deep fried food myself much, if I buy from a takeaway shop it's usually a burger). There was leftovers, which we ditched into the bokashi. I actually had garlic prawns that I made myself from fresh chili and garlic out of the garden, and about $2 worth of frozen prawns.
The little one didn't really eat much - he never does. The chicken nuggets, a couple of chips, 3 little chicken wings. The older child ate a massive amount. One could think I'm a terrible dad for being bloody glad he ate so much, but considering that he's spent most of his life underweight, and only in the last year has he finally begun to converge from below on normal in size and strength, I think I can be forgiven for trying to fatten him up and would feel quite bitter to be taxed on it. His strength gains have been tremendous this year.
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James Butler, in reply to
ask anyone hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week
Well on dialysis you pretty much can't eat fresh fruit or veg at all... wait, how did we get on to this?
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
That's lovely. The author obviously loves sardines. I can't imagine anything so poetic written about hot chips served in greasy paper.
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Danielle, in reply to
I think it was my fault. It usually is.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
Then let's stick to that, shall we?
Sardines are foul.
I eat quite a lot of McDonalds. -
Sacha, in reply to
on dialysis you pretty much can't eat fresh fruit or veg
really - how come?
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Sacha, in reply to
a serving of chips (which cost me exactly $1 about 40 minutes ago)
heck - where? #cheap
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Sardines are foul.
Well yes, though unlike chocolate fish there's not the moral qualm about biting heads off, because someone's already done it for you.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Yeah, I agree, subsidising dairy was a bad idea (I completely oppose the government's subsidising of irrigation initiatives, for example) - but folks were calling for a retail price decease on a 'good' food - so it was the first of two drinks (as a substitute for fizzy drink) that came to mind.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
What about the green jelly? Isn’t that basically just sugar? WHAT IF I GET ON THE DIALYSIS??
Eat everything in moderation and you won't.
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The one thing discussions about food and nutrition always seem to ignore is the utility people get from food beyond its nutrients and calories. It's hard to measure, but it's real, which is why I'd pay $5 for a scoop of chips and -$20 for sardines. A tax has to be high to overcome that utility, and those affected by the tax are going to lose that utility. You're making people's lives less pleasant in the hope that there's long term gain - that's a big call, and you can't handwave it away by saying nobody should like fizzy anyway.
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Sacha, in reply to
I eat quite a lot of McDonalds
My objection to that is mainly value-for-money.
If only there were drive-through chippies. Or kebabs, etc. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
That’s lovely. The author obviously loves sardines. I can’t imagine anything so poetic written about hot chips served in greasy paper.
There are loads of poems about chips. And even more about fish and chips.
I can't eat sardines because they are full of purines and I am prone to gout.
Also Katharine, give it a rest, eh?
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James Butler, in reply to
Excess potassium can build up between sessions iirc. When I was growing up, those vegetables Dad could eat needed to be soaked and boiled separately to leach out the potassium (and vitamins, flavour etc.), except on actual dialysis nights when he could have more-or-less anything. Potatoes! Tomatoes! Bananas! A cornucopia of delights!
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I eat quite a lot of McDonalds
My objection to that is mainly value-for-money.
If only there were drive-through chippies. Or kebabs, etc.Tend to agree. McDonald's would be an okay "sometimes" food if it weren't such terrible value for money. Frankly, I've been off it since I went for my once-every-few-months fillet o' fish from the Queen St McD's and it was just bloody awful.
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Sacha, in reply to
crikey, friend needs to safeguard kidneys
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Then let’s stick to that, shall we?
Sardines are foul.
I eat quite a lot of McDonalds.Okay. Let me then appeal to you on behalf of your children. What's important is getting them to like sardines from an early age, and this relies on you eating them too.
So you like McDonalds - then I'm guessing you like tomato sauce? Good. Start with the sardines in tomato sauce. And I'm also guessing if you like McDonalds, you like cheese? Good. Spread your sardines in tomato sauce on toast and then grate a bit of cheese on top and grill it in the oven. Eat them this first time, by yourself - in secret. Was it tolerable? Maybe it was even good? If still no, try tuna fish. The important thing is finding one thing in that food group that becomes a part of your weekly routine.
On the McDonalds thing - what's your favourite meal? Whatever it is, try making it at home. If a burger, add grated carrot and/or beetroot to it. If McNuggets, buy Coat 'n Cook and bake small bits of coated chicken thighs/breast, as an alternate to frying. Is this home cooked alternate better? Worse?
Just not the same?
Why not? Is it the taste of the food, or the atmosphere of the place? Or the convenience? Or just the habit/familiarity? Once you understand better why you eat at McDonalds - you might find eating there far less frequently brings you more satisfaction in whatever brings you there in the first place. For example, if its the playground for the kids - the novelty of it will make it just that much better if they haven't been there recently.
In the long run, McDonalds is far more expensive than eating at home. That might be important to you, that might not. McDonalds is not healthy if eaten regularly. There's a good documentary, (I think it's called) Supersize Me. Watch it. Read up on the ingredients in McDonalds food - not what McDonalds tells you, but other, independent analyses.
McDonalds is a tax dodger;
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/68694985/How-McDonalds-dodged-half-a-billion-dollars-in-Australian-taxMcDonalds was a zero-hour contract hold out, until threatened with strike action;
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/272513/deal-to-end-mcdonald's-zero-hour-contractsMcDonalds is one of NZs largest minimum wage employers;
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5275901/15-an-hour-too-rich-for-MaccasAnd so on. Is that what you were looking for?
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BenWilson, in reply to
heck – where? #cheap
Out here in da hood, where us poor folk live :-). I didn't actually weigh the chips to be sure the serving was 400g, but it wouldn't have been far off - it was about the size of 2 cups. The whole package would have been about a liter, densely packed, maybe 800g of food.
Since I've been calorie counting (well actually kJ counting), I've come to realize that things like hot chips contain ridiculous amounts of energy. Not much else, but they're definitely energy dense. It's by no means a food that's a good idea to eat daily, even if you do burn a lot of energy in your job - exercise demands a lot more protein or you get muscle wastage. 1000 calories is like an hour and a half of cycling to burn off. Just in the chips - which is only the padding in a fish-and-chips meal.
Of course I'm not suggesting it should be eaten every day. That's a bad idea and a good recipe for obesity, and/or other serious health issues - I'll give Katherine that. Where I differ is not in thinking it's a bad idea as a primary food source, but in what to do about that. Rising obesity is a problem. I don't think we really understand why at a deep level - obviously at a superficial level we understand it perfectly well - people eat more than they burn. But why do they? Why is this changing? What's different? What public measures have been effective in kerbing obesity around the world? At what cost? Is that cost acceptable to us, here?
To me, it's an extraordinarily wrongheaded idea that increasing the cost of unhealthy foods will have much effect, to the point of outweighing the damage that it could do. Of the two social ills we could have, obesity or malnutrition, I think I would prefer a society that had obesity, frankly.
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
I eat McDonalds because I choose to.
My diet is nobody else's business,
I'm fat.
I also make the lives of a lot of people bearable, and dare I say it, better.
So no, I don't need your advice.
Thanks for your concern.
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