Letters: Cheap food for school children could be false economy

Options for the school lunches programmes on display. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Letters to the Editor

It is false economy on the part of the New Zealand Government to supply cheap, over processed, 250-300g meals with which to feed our children, our most vulnerable to food deprivation of the population.

Caregivers feed this unhealthy fare to their children, resulting in lower education results and health issues including obesity and diabetes.

As one columnist wrote last week, Kiwis ate like kings in the 1940-50s but not anymore! Now many New Zealanders exist on over processed ‘junk’ food.

Our children are not responsible for grocery shopping and have absolutely no say in what their caregivers feed them. Now the Government is applying the same mantra with its unhealthy, cheap school lunches.

It will come back to bite them in the near future, in the enormous cost to our health budget and ever dropping educational achievement levels.

Why do we insist on caring for the top down instead of building health from the bottom up?

Marie Kaire, Whangārei.

Fresh food needed

Photos of options for the new school lunches (Herald, Jan 6) show a product that has been prepared by a company that supplies rest home food, and these look just like that.

Kids need food they have to chew, not suck. Every second or third day should see a fare of fresh, in season New Zealand fruits and raw vegetable crudites like carrot, celery and courgette sticks with a dollop of savoury sauce.

Top it off with a small piece of cheese, hard dark chocolate, or a cheerio and it costs around $3 all up.

Larry Tompkins, Waiuku.

Support for others

Given that 2024 was painful in many ways, and the start of 2025 is full of tragedy, it is uplifting to read about Kiwis who have overcome terrible loss and made the decision to support and help others in need, (Herald, Jan 3).

There can be nothing more courageous than people putting aside their own pain to focus on “what really matters in life” and become champions for individuals who have lost precious loved ones, suffered sexual and physical abuse, and those who have been ground down by poverty.

Some of these amazing New Zealanders are more well know than others, like Louise Nicholas and David Letele, but I suspect their renown is useful to them only for the purpose of gaining awareness and support for their programmes.

If we could emulate even a small portion of what these selfless heroes do and donate whatever we can no matter how small to their causes, the world will be a better place.

Mary Hearn, Glendowie.

Rates rebate

On ‘Rates reality bites for retirees’ (Herald, Jan 6) should the authorities, in national and local government not consider granting cash-strapped retirees a rates rebate as we in South Australia enjoy?

Retirees, I imagine, mostly have limited income from government pensions and in a country beset by recession granting qualifying retirees a rebate which avoids them falling into areas and distress is a compassionate and moral way forward.

Saber Ahmed Jazbhay, Ellerslie (on holiday).

Lethal ingenuity

Using AI to achieve mass killings in Gaza: It is amazing how human ingenuity can be used to extinguish a perceived enemy.

Even if that enemy is only one of 10 killed, the rest being non-combatants, as civilians, women and children constitute the majority of the dead and the tenfold more wounded.

And the IDF war machine blows everything up including schools, hospitals, peace workers, and food suppliers.

Much of the so called ‘civilised world’ just looks the other way. The International Court of Justice in The Hague issues an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu to be tried for genocide and the United States Congress gives the same person 57 standing ovations and provides the necessary weapons.

What has the world come to?

Frank Olsson, Freemans Bay.

Festival clean-up

The hypocrisy of the concertgoers at the recent Rhythm and Vines Festival was there for all to see.

Apparently, it is going to take Gisborne community members about two weeks cleaning up the Waiohika Estate and nearby areas after about 20,000 festivalgoers flocked there.

Presumably most of the concertgoers would have been of the generation that advocates for all problems associated with the environment and that we need to protect it. Many of them would have participated in the school climate strikes.

And yet here they show complete indifference to these problems by leaving rubbish at the festival and strewn along roads as they left the area.

These are the very people who say they have no future because they blame the lack of concern past generations have had for the environment.

Bernard Walker, Mt Maunganui.

Gambling advertising

Not only are we still plagued by advertisements for alcohol, we are now being frivolously enticed to participate in gambling.

Also, why has the need for cigarettes not gone up in smoke?

John Norris, Whangamatā.

Gun don’t make it safer

Police in the California city where we lived for decades were required to wear ballistic vests and be armed when attending any callout or traffic stop.

Not unreasonably, police must positively identify a target before shooting, but they die too often because a manic or reckless armed shooter has the element of surprise working for them in that situation.

Carrying guns doesn’t make the job safer for police, or the public. In the school where I worked, several security guards were armed and we had regular lock-down drills. None of this made anyone feel safer.

Barb Callaghan, Kohimarama.