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Junk Food in Schools to Go

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By PICKERING, Helen

New Zealand will finally tackle one of the most important health issues of our time -- removing junk food from schools and improving the nutrition and health of the next generation, Green MP Sue Kedgley said yesterday.

And her comments have been applauded by Timaru Community and Public Health dietitian Liz Cutler who said junk food in schools put children in a toxic environment.

The Greens have secured an agreement to work with the Government on a range of initiatives to improve New Zealand's nutrition and food environment. They will be fully involved in developing policy and legislation in those areas, and the government has agreed to allocate funding.

Ms Cutler said it was great to see the government had allocated funding because one of the reasons schools got attracted to vending machines and fund- raisers with junk foods was because they needed the money to provide essential resources for the school.

"Extra funding could address these needs.

"It might also mean schools don't have to use any corporate sponsored programmes and class materials which keep the brand names of unhealthy products associated with a healthy lifestyle," Ms Culter said.

The Greens' proposals include a nutrition fund to pay for initiatives aimed at creating a healthy eating environment, developing a healthy eating policy and guidelines for schools, a traffic light labelling system to enable consumers to quickly identify healthy food, publishing an annual Children's Food Promotion plan that sets out how the Health Ministry intends to develop an environment that encourages children to make healthy eating choices.

"The initiatives aim to encourage healthy eating and protect children from the overwhelming commercial pressures on them to eat unhealthy food," Mrs Kedgely said.

"With one third of our children overweight or obese we are facing an inevitable public health crisis unless we take decisive action.

"We are not prepared to sit back and watch the health of our children being undermined when we have the opportunity to make simple changes with enormous long-term benefits."

Mrs Kedgley said if New Zealanders were serious about trying to improve their health, they needed to start by improving their children's diet.

She said getting junk food and vending machines out of schools would be a priority, along with labelling to make it easier for parents to buy healthier food for children.

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Source: Timaru Herald

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