Teen shows family path to health

Aorere College student Maluatai Ah Kee does the shopping at home. Pictures / Dean Purcell

Maluatai Ah Kee has brought home a food revolution after learning through her high school about the obesity risks facing New Zealanders and especially her Pacific people.

The South Auckland 15-year-old's family of seven have carved mountains of sugar-laden soft drinks and fat-filled takeaways out of their diet - because she said so.

"I do the shopping," Maluatai said. "They support me 100 per cent. I just tell them the nutritional facts and what they can do for their body."

She calculates that before she attended two Auckland University-run health and nutrition camps, the latest in the last school holidays, her family ate KFC, pizza or other takeaways at least three times a week. They washed this down with five or six 1.5-litre bottles of Pepsi, Coke or other soft drinks.

They have cut down to one takeaway a week and two bottles of fizzy a month, now drink mainly water, have switched to making soups or stir-fries, and converted from white to wholemeal bread.

Originally from Samoa, the Ah Kees have also cut back on traditional Samoan food, which can be high in saturated fat.

Yet Maluatai, who weighs 69kg, said her family were not overweight, although her grandfather takes medicine for diabetes.

The source of her enthusiasm to spread the health message is an international study that aims to reduce obesity in South Auckland, Melbourne, Tonga and Fiji.

As part of the study, Maluatai and 17 other pupils at Aorere College in Papatoetoe are members of the school's new health council. They devise ways to motivate their families and schoolmates to eat more healthily and exercise.

Yesterday council member Lychhun Kouch, 17, helped give free fruit to pupils who memorised messages such as, "Fast food makes you go slow" as part of a health week.

Today a free breakfast will be offered pupils to emphasise the importance of a good morning meal.

Fizzy drinks have long gone from the tuck shop. The project will pay for filtered-water drinking fountains and supply plastic bottles in a bid to reduce demand for the remaining added-sugar milks and cordials.

The researchers hope the project will help head off New Zealand's worsening obesity epidemic and its effects such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Nationally a third of children - including about 60 per cent of Pacific children - are obese or overweight.

One of the researchers, Associate Professor Robert Scragg, said the project aimed to make small changes across a large group, which could add up to huge differences overall.

They are checking the body sizes and physical activity of 3500 pupils at seven high schools. Four, including Aorere, are receiving training and other interventions.

Life lessons

Maluatai Ah Kee, a year 11 student of Aorere College in Papatoetoe, has rung the dietary changes for her family. Among the modifications:

* Soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coke: from about 28 1.5-litre bottles a month for the family of seven, to two.

* Takeaways like KFC, McDonalds, pizza, fish & chips: from three or four times a week, to once.

* Traditional Samoan meals with coconut cream: from three or four times a week, to only on Sundays.

* Now often eat soup or stirfry.

* White bread to wholemeal bread.

* From no breakfast, to breakfast of porridge/cereal and fruit every morning.

* Snacks: packet of chips before; now fruit.