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Blaming people for their own obesity is “superficial, vague and wrong,” says a health expert after Judith Collins commented that overweight people must “take some personal responsibility.”
The National Party leader said that her attitude towards the obesity problem “was not sticky”, adding: “Do not blame the systems for your personal decisions.”
The party leader also encouraged people to recognize their “little weaknesses” during Tuesday’s campaign.
But health and nutrition experts disagreed with comments from politicians saying obesity is a serious health problem that affects a significant portion of New Zealanders, both adults and children.
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Personal responsibility plays a role to some extent, but so do genetics and the environment, they say. One said that children today are growing up in swamps full of junk food.
“The blame-the-victim approach is superficial, vague and wrong,” said Professor Boyd Swinburn, professor of population nutrition and global health at the University of Auckland.
He said the obesity epidemic, which was officially declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1997, is a global problem, and the idea that it is solely a matter of personal responsibility does not make sense.
STUFF
One in three adults is classified as obese in New Zealand.
“This has not been caused by a global collapse of personal willpower or by everyone who chooses to be fat, that’s a completely wrong diagnosis,” said Swinburn, who established the first WHO Collaborating Center for the Prevention of Obesity at Deakin University in Melbourne.
“It has been caused by an explosion of junk food and processed food … creating the kind of environment that will lead to obesity.”
The New Zealand Healthy Survey of 2018 and 2019 found that around one in three adults and one in nine children are obese. A 2017 update from the OECD ranked New Zealand fourth behind the United States, Chile and Mexico for countries with the highest rates of obesity in adults.
ROSA WOODS / Things
National leader Judith Collins said people needed to acknowledge their weaknesses.
University of Otago professor Rachael Taylor also didn’t find it helpful to label obesity as simply a matter of willpower or personal responsibility.
“How does that really explain the massive increase in prevalence that we’ve seen in recent decades?” she asked.
Taylor, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Center at the university, said overeating and under-exercising have become increasingly common in today’s society.
“Those kinds of behaviors are really endemic behaviors. Food that is cheap, easy to eat, accessible to all is not necessarily the food that we should be … eating to benefit our health.
“At the end of the day, there is always a balance between genetics and the environment,” Taylor said.
There have been no significant changes, positive or negative, in the childhood obesity rate since 2011/12 and in the adult rate since 2012/13. However, research derived from before-school checks shows that obesity rates in preschool-age children decreased between 2010/11 and 2015/16.
“The actual rate of overweight and obesity, and even extreme obesity, [in young children] it’s declining … across the board, ”explained Taylor. “In our preschoolers, somehow … [the country is] make a difference.”
Grant Matthew / Stuff
Auckland University Professor Boyd Swinburn is Co-Chair of the Prevention and Policy Section of World Obesity and Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on Obesity.
Both experts said that for there to be meaningful positive change, leadership is needed.
“Obesity [has] It has been growing in New Zealand for at least 30, probably 40 years. It’s been on the headlines for 20 years and we haven’t had a substantial response from the government, “Swinburn said.
“We certainly have not seen the kinds of policies that WHO recommends, which are those policies around creating a healthy environment.” Swinburn has personally contributed to more than 30 WHO consultations and reports on the subject.
Taylor wants to see real government action, perhaps in the form of a sugar tax, to make New Zealand a healthier place to live. Simply putting blame and responsibility on people does not work.
“Personal responsibility is what we have been telling people for years. We have to do more. The evidence is growing stronger that a sugar tax can actually have an effect. “
Asked about a sugar tax in The press Leaders of the debate earlier this month, both Collins and Labor opposition Jacinda Ardern said it was out. Collins said education was better and Ardern said his party would distribute healthy lunches to 200,000 students across the country.
“People talk about [a sugar tax] It’s in the sugary drinks, it’s in the cereals, it’s in the tomato source, it’s in almost every item our children are looking for, ”Ardern said.
Both leaders spoke about a potential tax based on dental care, rather than obesity, and the bigger health implications that sugar-filled products can have.
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A sugar tax could be one of the best ways to reduce obesity rates.
Swinburn said that various academic reports and recommendations have been made over the years, many of which have been ignored or neglected.
Changes at the government level could also include restricting the marketing of junk food, allowing only healthy foods in schools and early childhood education centers, and having mandatory labeling on the front of the package.
“We have allowed the food industry to create food environments for us that are simply filled with the types of foods [that are] full of cheap ingredients … and they make us fat.
“It is not an unexpected result when you create a food environment that is full of junk food and people are going to get fat.”
