LCHF Enters the New Zealand Government System : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#16 ^

Sun, Apr-23-17, 01:25

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

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Location: UK

Quote:

From The New Zealand Herald
23 April, 2017

New Government health adviser hopes to end the sale of chocolate as a fundraiser in schools

Sending boxes of chocolate home for students to sell as a school fundraiser is one of the first issues the Government's controversial new health adviser would like to tackle.

Public health professor Grant Schofield, also dubbed the "Fat Professor", has been appointed the Ministry of Education's first chief education health and nutrition adviser.

He told the Herald on Sunday he would not shy away from giving the Government frank advice.

"That's not always going to be exactly what they want to hear. It's not going to be that we have all the answers - some acknowledgement of that is actually better than saying we have it all sorted."

Schofield said the fact some schools sent children home with 60 chocolate bars for their families to sell showed there remained a "systemic failure" in attitudes towards food.

He said that was one of the things he hoped to help change through his new role.

"Fundraising through confectionery just isn't a good look. Families like mine end up with 60-plus chocolate bars in the house.

"We don't want to have to ask others to buy them and don't want to return them so we end up with that many bars. They will get eaten and we don't need that much sugar in our house. Surely we can do something more imaginative."

While schools might not have everything right, he applauded the initiative many schools had already taken in banning sugary drinks and allowing only milk and water.

"I'm pretty keen to see a pretty robust conversation around sugar and processed food. That's a society-wide issue."

Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman said Schofield would be able to provide advice around the design, integration and implementation of physical activity and nutrition components of the curriculum.

"Obesity is a serious issue threatening the health of young New Zealanders, which means some of our kids could end up living shorter lives than their parents," he said.

"In 2014/2015, 11 per cent of all children aged 2 to 4 years were obese. The figures for Maori and Pacific children were 15 per cent and 30 per cent respectively."

Schofield, father of three boys and director of Auckland University of Technology's Human Potential Centre, has come under fire in the past for his support of the low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

While there remained constant controversy over the benefits and dangers of fat, almost everyone agreed sugar and processed food were bad for you, he said.

"There's a lot of controversy around food. Everyone eats. We've all got an opinion about it. There's a bit of disagreement in the science but there's a lot of agreement. I'd like us focusing on the agreement."

Most people also agreed food that was recently growing on a plant or wandering around in nature was best for you, he said.

"We've ended up in a system where there's a lot of highly processed, convenience food.

"I'm all for fast food, I'm just not for highly-processed food."

A whole apple or carrot was as easy to throw into a school lunch as a bag of chips or a muesli bar, Schofield said.

But will kids eat it or will it rot in the bottom of their bag?

"Eventually they'll get hungry. If the usual food you get is packaged food, that's going to be more palatable, but eventually they will eat it. We are the parents."

Physical activity was equally as important and while young children did not need a set exercise regime, Schofield said, they did need limits placed on their use of technology.

"The default mechanism of the young kid is when there's nothing else to do, they play. Technology is great. For our kids they are useful learning tools but very poor masters. The modern parent should be putting rules in around devices."

What children did need was to be able to take more risks while playing and he hoped to encourage parents to allow that.

If children were not allowed to "free range around the neighbourhood a bit and take risks" it would affect them not only physically but developmentally, he said.

It could be harder to keep children active through their high school years so that was when encouraging them to take part in a sport was particularly important.

Tips for parents

1. Eat foods low in human interference (low HI), defined as food that isn't in a package and was recently alive.
2. Cut the sugar by half - the average Kiwi kid has 17 teaspoons of free sugar a day.
3. Don't be scared of fat. If the fat is in whole foods (see low HI above) then it's probably good for them.
4. We have enough phones and iPads and rules for them are a good idea. Technology is a great servant but a poor master. Mostly it's a good idea to restrict screen use and send kids outside. If they complain of being bored they need to be sent out more.
5. Everything in health is underpinned by a good night's sleep.

A healthy lunchbox for a 7-year-old
A banana
An apple
Some cherry tomatoes
A piece of cheese
Curry and rice left over from dinner

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/a...jectid=11842060

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#17 ^

Fri, May-31-19, 01:18

Grav

Senior Member

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Update: 2 years on, and Grant Schofield reveals he has since quit his role with the Ministry of Education.

I remember hearing him being interviewed on Cliff Harvey's podcast a few months ago where he mentioned he had recently departed from somewhere because he simply found he wasn't happy where he was. I remember hoping at the time that he wasn't referring to this, but I'm perhaps not entirely surprised to have now learned that indeed he was.

Anti-obesity programme slammed as 'political window-dressing'

Quote:

The Government's former Chief Education Health and Nutrition Adviser has slammed a new anti-obesity programme in schools as "political window-dressing".

Professor Grant Schofield, who was appointed to the role by the former National Government in 2017, has disclosed that he quit at the end of last year in frustration that the Government was not tackling head-on the poor diet and inactivity that are driving epidemic rates of diabetes, cancers and heart conditions.

"I'm disillusioned with where they have gone in government with health," he said.

"It's supposed to be 'wellbeing', but it's not wellbeing. Taking your kid to take your filling out is not dental health, it's dental sickness."

The Budget has provided $10 million a year from next year and $15m a year from 2021-22 for "supporting schools and early learning settings to improve wellbeing through healthy eating and physical activity".

Sports Minister Grant Robertson said the money would fund 15 more health promotion officers to promote healthy diet across the country's 1946 primary schools, and 110 physical activity advisers to work with 300 primary schools next year and with 500 schools from 2021-22.

"They haven't decided whether [the schools will be selected] on a decile basis or a regional basis," he said.

The physical activity programme will be based on an existing Sport NZ pilot programme called Play.Sport, but with a wider brief.

"We felt it needed to be broader, it's about general physical activity," Robertson said.

But Schofield said the programme fell far short of what was needed.

"I just think the scale of the problem doesn't match the investment," he said.

"That's why I quit that job, because it frustrates me. It's just political window-dressing."

Schofield said the Government should be tackling the root cause of the crisis in the supply of sugary food.

"You change the price point of sugary drinks for a start," he said.

"And you fundamentally change where you spend the money in health to increase public health and health professionals that do this stuff for a living. Spending the money on palliative care isn't going to make a better society."

Professor Elaine Rush, who helped to develop Sport Waikato's Project Energize to improve children's nutrition and physical activity, said the new initiative would not tackle "food poverty".

"It looks like a good thing, but it's not going to nip the real problem in the bud," she said.

She urged the Government to tax unhealthy foods and cut GST on healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables, so that low-income families could afford to eat healthily.

#18 ^

Fri, May-31-19, 04:37

JEY100 JEY100 is offline

To Good Health!

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Plan: P:E/DDF
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Oh, that is sad to lose his voice of reason. But as Tom Naughton has said forever, change in dietary guidelines will not come from the top down, but from botton-up through the wisom of crowds. Keep writing and talking about your success.

Quote:

The Anointed seem to believe they’re going to regain control of the conversation about diet and health by producing more studies. The American Heart Association and other organizations populated by Intellectual Yet Idiot types will no doubt keep publishing studies telling us that saturated fat is bad, grains are good, etc., etc.

Their strategy is going to fail. Millions of us have learned what works and what doesn’t through experience. We’ve done nearly the opposite of what they recommend and lost weight, gained energy, waved goodbye to chronic ailments, and improved our health markers. That’s the experience. And ultimately, that’s all that really matters.

Theories come and go, but experience stays.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index....dge-part-three/

#19 ^

Fri, May-31-19, 09:02

GRB5111

Senior Member

Posts: 4,042

Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"

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Location: Herndon, VA

Keeping Naughton's observation first and foremost in our minds is important, as that's exactly what's happening. The philosophical and message problems in New Zealand, the ongoing debate over the DGAs, the financed propaganda from Pharm and Food, and the hysterical claims about certain WOEs as being fad diets all seem to be in response to the emerging grass roots (bottom up) n=1 experiences that are quickly becoming more popular as more become aware that their friend has regained health by eating differently. Very powerful, and I'd much rather do it this way than rely on the government for anything nowadays.