It was a lurch back to the early days of the Key Government in 2009, when to prove its macho, anti-nanny state credentials, it summarily scrapped the previous government's directive that school canteens sell only healthy food and beverages.
This refusal to confront the obesity-diabetes epidemic is like a replay of the global warming crisis fiasco.
For years, politicians here and overseas shrugged off the increasingly strident warnings of the informed scientific community, preferring instead to turn off their brains and listen to the mavericks and the self-interested commercial interests, who claimed it was all greenie scare-mongering.
It's as though Dr Coleman has stumbled across a copy of the controversial book Maori Health, which hit the headlines briefly 10 years ago calling for a magic "poly pill" to cure obese Maori of their ills.
Co-authored by the South Auckland Kotahitangi Community Trust's chairman, Peter Caccioppoli, and the trust's GP, Rhys Cullen, it argued "the answer to diabetes is not diet and exercise but medication".
They argued the Crown's "health Nazis" opposed activities like smoking and eating fatty foods simply because Maori enjoyed them. Instead of expecting Maori to stop smoking or start dieting, the Government should hand out pills to prevent illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.
Dr Cullen's campaign for a cure-all pill came to a sudden halt soon after, when he was found guilty of professional misconduct and banned from practising for obtaining large quantities of pseudoephedrine tablets, the main precursor for the Class A drug methamphetamine, for illegal purposes. His claim it was for research purposes was not believed.
So while Dr Coleman stands around waiting for such an elixir of good health, or for further evidence that a sugar tax will help make New Zealanders healthier, the sugar merchants and their middlemen continue to merrily overdose our drinks, our cereals, our sauces and 101 other commodities we wouldn't suspect, with their unhealthy product.
In their open letter, the experts underlined the extent of the crisis. One in nine Kiwi kids and almost one in three adults are obese. The child rate is fourth highest in the world. Every year, 5000 children under the age of 8 need general anaesthetic operations to remove rotten teeth.
All up, 35,000 children and 275,000 adults have rotten teeth extracted each year. They could have added that more than 300,000 New Zealanders suffer from diabetes.
Experts like Boyd Swinburn, Auckland University professor of population nutrition and global health, have been warning for years that obesity has overtaken smoking "as the biggest contributor to the burden of disease".
The industry argues a tax on sugar will not reduce consumption. But that is what was argued about tobacco and alcohol, and the critics were proved wrong.
Dr Gluckman chaired the recent WHO Commission on Ending Child Obesity which supports a tax of sugar-laced drinks as its No 2 recommendation. Dr Coleman is expected to ceremonially endorse this report when he joins other world health ministers in Geneva this month.
He should then come home and honour his signature.
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