How healthy are New Zealand food environments? A comprehensive assessment 2014-2017.

Abstract

New Zealand has the third highest rate of overweight and obesity for adults and children within OECD countries. Dietary risk factors, including high body mass index, are by far the biggest contributor of health loss in New Zealand (18.6%) ahead of smoking as the next largest contributor (9.1%). Unhealthy diets are heavily infl uenced by unhealthy, obesogenic food environments, which in turn are infl uenced by the degree to which healthy food policies are implemented. Thus, it is important to closely monitor and benchmark progress on implementing recommended food policies and improving food environments to support and evaluate government and private sector actions to reduce obesity, diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and their inequalities. No country has yet undertaken a comprehensive, national food environments and policies survey, making this study an international first. From 2014 to 2017, we conducted a comprehensive, national food policies and environments study, using INFORMAS methodology. INFORMAS is the International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support and it has developed study protocols to measure and benchmark food environments and policies globally. We created the full picture of the healthiness of New Zealand food environments by conducting multiple sub-studies using INFORMAS protocols on: healthy food policy implementation by the Government (in 2014 and 2017); commitments and disclosure of the top 25 food companies to improve population nutrition; food composition (in 13 280 foods); food labelling; food marketing to children (television, websites, magazines, food packages, social media, and in and around schools); food provision (819 schools, 28 hospitals, 70 sport centres); food retail (9674 food outlets in communities nationally and inside 204 supermarkets); and food prices (healthy versus less healthy foods, meals, and diets). We used a range of New Zealand and international systems to classify foods as ‘healthier’ and ‘less healthy’ depending on the food environment surveyed.