Keep selling those chocolate bars: Health Minister Jonathan Coleman

Health Minister Jonathan Cole is not heeding suggestions that schoolchildren stop selling chocolate bars to raise funds. Photo/123RF

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman won't be listening to advice to end chocolate box fundraisers at schools; saying he has sold plenty of bars to help his own children's school.

Public health professor Grant Schofield, also dubbed the "Fat Professor", has recently been appointed the Ministry of Education's first chief education health and nutrition adviser.

He told the Herald on Sunday he would not shy away from giving the Government frank advice, and the fact some schools sent children home with 60 chocolate bars for their families to sell showed there remained a "systemic failure" in attitudes towards food.

"Fundraising through confectionery just isn't a good look," Schofield said.

But Coleman doesn't agree, taking to Twitter on the weekend to say he was happy for schools to keep selling chocolate to raise funds: "I've sold plenty of them myself to help my kids' school".

An Education Review Office (ERO) report on good nutrition and physical fitness at schools released this month found the challenges ranged from competitive parents on the sidelines to the food parents gave children to bring to school.

Early childhood centre teachers told the ERO one of the biggest challenges was unhealthy food in children's lunchboxes, and a reluctance to be seen as the "food police".

That was also a concern echoed at the primary and secondary school level, where leaders said the proximity of local dairies and takeaways were often visited by children "or parents provided unhealthy food for their children to eat at school".