Most school tuckshops, lunch order systems, and fundraising activities remain far less than healthy. Photo / Michael Cunningham, File
Most school tuckshops, lunch order systems, and fundraising activities remain far less than healthy. Photo / Michael Cunningham, File
OPINION
All parents want their children to grow up healthy, happy, and well-educated. The Covid lockdowns were effective at protecting New Zealanders from the ravages of the pandemic, but they have had consequences for kids.
Spikes in mental health problems, disengagement from school, and obesity levels are the most noticeable.
Just as the multibillion-dollar Covid Economic Recovery Package was necessary to support businesses and livelihoods, we should also have a Covid Child Wellbeing Recovery Package to support parents to improve their children's physical health, mental health, and school engagement.
This package will not cost billions of dollars but it will take some courage from the Government to match its rhetoric on child wellbeing and preventive health with its actions. An opportunity to start this will be put to the Cabinet this month in relation to healthy food and drinks in schools.
Healthy, happy children need healthy, happy food and schools can be big contributors. Schools teach the importance of nutrition in classrooms. The Government's Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme provides free, healthy lunches to a quarter of primary and secondary school students. Many schools have implemented healthy food and drink policies because they see the value in healthier, more engaged students. Two-thirds of primary schools are already "water and milk" only schools. That's the good news.
The bad news is, despite teachings in the curriculum, most school tuckshops, lunch order systems, and fundraising activities are far less healthy.
A 2016 national survey of school food services showed that seven of the top 10 selling food items were unhealthy, deemed "occasional" by the Ministry of Health guidelines. Hardly any schools had a robust policy to guide school food practices and over 90 per cent of the food used for fundraising was unhealthy. Overall, secondary schools had less healthy food and drink environments than primary schools.
The Ministry of Education is converting its food and drinks guidelines into regulations to take effect next year. Education Ministers Chris Hipkins and Jan Tinetti will make recommendations to the Cabinet shortly. However, the ministry's original preferred option is weak. It proposes to make it mandatory for schools to promote healthy food and drinks, but when it comes to the provision of food, the only requirement is for drinks provided in primary schools to be water and milk only - which they mostly are already.
Boyd Swinburn. Photo / Supplied
In other words, by having no rules on the healthiness of food or drinks provided by secondary schools and no rules for the healthiness of food provision in primary schools, the ministry is pitching for the least effective policy and ignoring where the main problems are.
Many health groups, including the Health Coalition Aotearoa which I chair, cannot believe this massive policy incoherence and the weakness of the ministry's preferred option. Many submissions called for the regulations to cover food and drinks that both primary and secondary schools provide or sell.
By policy incoherence, I mean schools have to teach nutrition in the classroom and promote healthy food in general but can keep their junk food-loaded tuckshop.
I mean that the Government has its Child and Adolescent Wellbeing strategy, Healthy Eating Guidelines, healthy food criteria for Ka Ora, Ka Ako, and a new Pae Ora health system which is supposed to prioritise prevention, but junk food-loaded tuckshops are fine.
I mean that Kiwi kids are facing crises of obesity, mental health, and dental caries, but the Ministry of Education thinks that no changes to junk food tuckshops are needed.
It is widely known that fruit and vegetables and wholefoods are healthy while ultra-processed food, sugary drinks and most takeaway food contribute to unhealthy weight gain and rotten teeth. What is less widely known is that food affects mood.
Many studies in children and adults show consistent relationships between healthy diets and better mental health and the opposite for unhealthy diets. Sugary, fatty, salty processed foods seem to give a short lift in mood followed by a longer depressed mood – similar to the pattern of short highs and long lows associated with addictions.
Parents need all the support they can get to bring up healthy, happy kids. It was tough for parents pre-Covid with the widening gaps between wages and the cost of living forcing many to work harder and longer to provide for their kids. Then came the Covid pandemic and the lockdowns to create the steep rise in childhood obesity and mental health problems. Now post-Covid, prices are shooting up even faster, especially for healthy foods.
Having all food and drinks provided or sold by all schools meet the Ministry of Health's healthy-eating guidelines would be the best and fairest for parents and kids. It would also really contribute to a Child Wellbeing Recovery Package.
Kia kaha, Ministers.
• Professor Boyd Swinburn is the chairman of Health Coalition Aotearoa.
