Columns

John Brinsley-Pirie argues the affirmative while Tiho Mijatov argues the negative.

Affirmative
 
In New Zealand we need to face the harsh unpleasant truth; we are fat and as a nation we are only growing fatter. This is possibly the most serious health issue facing New Zealanders today. The government needs to do something; we need to promote healthier living by subsidising healthy foods like lean meats, fish, fruit and vegetables.

This policy will benefit all New Zealanders no matter what they earn because it gives them the choice over what to eat. Under the status quo it costs a lot to eat healthily – sure, veggies aren’t that expensive but we can’t honestly expect people to live exclusively on them. It’s foods like lean meats and fish which drive the shopping bill up. This needs to change. These foods, along with fruit and vegetables, need to be subsidised.
 
The brilliance of this policy is that it does not remove choice from the equation. If someone wants to have Maccas for breakfast every day, a pie for lunch and eat out for tea that is fine! However, it is important that we, as a nation, address the growing problem of our national waistline and highlight the healthier alternative by making it cheaper. Making healthy food cheaper incentivises its purchase. For instance, let’s look at lean meats. Who would buy a fatty processed packet of mince for $12 when you could buy the lean premium packet for the same price? That’s the kind of thing we need to start doing, giving people the choice to eat healthily within the limit of their wallets.
 
The other benefit we will see from such a policy is pressure coming off the health system. It is just a fact that those who carry more weight are more prone to diseases such as diabetes and other health issues which could have been avoided with a healthy diet. If we incentivise healthy living and it becomes cheaper for people to eat correctly then there is no logical reason why they won’t do it. Through this people will become healthier, removing strain on the health system, unclogging waiting lists and saving tax dollars which can be spent more efficiently elsewhere. The savings from this will more than outweigh the cost of the subsidy.
 
Because we need to address our rising obesity crisis, and because there is a clear benefit not only to the health of New Zealanders but also to the ongoing medical costs caused by growing obesity rates, we should absolutely adopt this policy.

 
Negative
 
The battle of the bulge has had many casualties, but are subsidies really an effective and fair knight in shining armour? Sadly not.

At the heart of subsidies’ weakness is the incorrect assumption that fatties make their food purchases based largely on price. In reality, more weight is placed on factors like convenience, accessibility and taste. And the fast food companies know they have this advantage; their products are pumped with additives that make you crave the taste until the next purchase, it takes no culinary skill on your part to place an order (skill which healthy cooking from scratch requires) and fast food is, well, fast. Pricing healthy food equally to unhealthy food via subsidies does not address these very important non-price factors and so will not help to shrink our national waistline.
 
There also lurks another sneaky tactic used to encourage us to choose fast food. UK studies have revealed that there is a higher concentration of fast food stores, dairies and the like in poorer areas. Why? Companies recognise that price isn’t important where the residents have little skill when it comes to preparing meals and even less time to spend cooking these wholesome dinners. The obesity issue in NZ is basically an education problem – obese people don’t care about food pyramids, heart foundation ticks, and RDIs – and subsidising healthy foods does nothing to address this. Moreover, as John rightly points out, these subsidies do not prevent people from still choosing the unhealthy option.
 
Finally we get to this dinner-table talk of money. Because the future uptake of salads, lean meats and co has been shown to be only marginal, this subsidy scheme has the potential to be a big fat waste of money for the government and thus us. And with lower costs for producers, the incentive exists for them to produce more grains and veggies than ever, flooding the market with their unwanted produce.
 
But what should we do? We need to promote policies which target not the symptoms of the obesity problem (i.e. people buying fatty food) but the causes, like the lack of consumer information available and their vulnerable position in the market. Simple measures like forcing unhealthy foods to have visible, clear calorie counts will be a good start. Recent forced calorie information has worked in New York, traditionally a fat fiefdom that’s fast shedding this image. More government regulation of unhealthy food – such as restricting fat and sugar content and regulating where and how many fast food outlets may be built – is another effective alternative. And that’s not to mention exercise promotion in schools and the community.
 
Whatever option we choose to promote, we need to ensure that it’s not merely a case of do-something-syndrome as introducing subsidies would be.