New Year Honours: Clifford Tasman-Jones showed good food a matter of balance

Clifford Tasman-Jones and his wife Bev at lunch at their Tutukaka house. Picture / Malcolm Pullman

When Professor Clifford Tasman-Jones started out in nutrition nearly 50 years ago, good health lay in the gut.

Sensible eating then was focused on increasing fibre content in the diet. The focus gradually shifted to fats and cholesterol, and a shift is happening again in light of alarming obesity statistics.

Professor Tasman-Jones, 77, is retired from formal practice, but maintains a nearly 40-hour week - unpaid - working for a number of organisations, such as the Nutrition Foundation, championing the need for healthy eating in a changing society.

"I think it's a love of people and a love of doing things."

Professor Tasman-Jones has been made a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his contributions to public health.

Until 1993, he was the senior clinician at Auckland Hospital and senior lecturer at the Auckland Medical School.

As chairman of the Department of Health's Nutrition Task Force, he led the group that wrote Food For Health, which established food and nutrition policy in the 1990s.

He has also been a member of numerous organisations, including the World Council of Gastroenterology, the New Zealand Nutrition Society and the Nutrition Foundation, where he is still medical director.

Through his present roles, he hopes to produce a definitive nutrition guide that will cut through the mixed messages people are getting. "It's the mixed messages that are really killing because you hear one day that fat is bad for you but the next day you hear that it's not quite so clear."

He fears too much emphasis has gone on just a few nutrients, rather than looking at the "broad pattern".

"I personally don't believe that there is such a thing as good foods and bad foods. But there are good serving sizes and bad serving sizes. You can make any food good or bad by the portion and the balance that you've got in the diet."

Individuals should observe their own daily eating patterns.

"My philosophy is to do things which don't destroy people in any way. Allow them to have their treats, but also give them the guidance which is necessary and then it's their responsibility."