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The failure of governments to ensure good nutrition for pregnant women and other factors that promote good health could be shaving several per cent off national incomes, says a leading medical academic.
"There's been a gross under-estimate of the costs of a poor start to life on a country's economy," Professor Peter Gluckman, director of the Liggins Institute at Auckland University, said last night.
Professor Gluckman is leading an international research project to quantify the costs to a country of factors like poor nutrition of pregnant women, babies and young children and the lack of support for breastfeeding.
These factors affect children's rates of growth, people's intellectual development and the prevalence of conditions like obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Members of the Healthy Start to Life project, including policy advisers, medical scientists and a World Bank economist, meet in Auckland and Wellington this week.
The Liggins Institute and its research partners have studied the origins of various diseases from the fetus and through human development.
"To focus on human development we need individuals, families, communities, politicians and agencies to understand that a healthy start to life will pay dividends for the whole of society, in time," Professor Gluckman said.
"I'm totally frustrated.
"A lot of good science has been done and this science has been paid lip service."
The research group's meetings fall in the week after Associate Education Minister Parekura Horomia was criticised for saying one reason some children did not eat breakfast was they were "trying to stay trim" - although he also stated that poverty might be the reason for some.
Professor Gluckman considered Mr Horomia's statement unhelpful.
"This is not the way children should lose weight," he said.
"It's clearly avoiding the fundamental issues that if we want a healthy society we have got to start with the whole life cycle from before women conceive, right through."
