OPINIONKaiOctober 11, 2024

Smoking ads are banned in New Zealand. Why are junk food ads still allowed?

Guest writer

With a health crisis driven by preventable illnesses, the government can take one big step now.

Last month the UK government banned junk food ads on TV before 9pm, while online ads for the same products have been banned outright. It’s the latest and most profound move in the UK to restrict unhealthy food and sugary drink marketing to kids that started with a 2019 ban on ads throughout London’s transport network.

It’s a move designed to lift pressure from the public health system – the NHS – following a damning report concluding it was in a “critical condition”. Meanwhile in New Zealand there is no sign of government action to address exactly the same problem.

Our health system is very clearly struggling to cope with huge pressures – including preventable illnesses related to diets high in salt, fat and sugar. New Zealand kids are drowning in junk food and sugary drink marketing. They see it on their screens, at sporting events, in classrooms and in neighbourhoods where they hang out with friends. It’s virtually impossible for children and teenagers to limit their intake of junk food when high consumption has been normalised through a constant flow of advertising.

Silhouette Of Man Smoking Cigarette And Watching Television In Dark — Cigarettes and alcohol have restrictions on advertising due to their adverse health effects. Why not junk food? (Getty Images)

Every parent who has ever been to the supermarket will be unsurprised by results from a recent Australian study showing marketing to kids directly results in children pestering their parents to purchase unhealthy food and fizzy drinks for them. Companies target kids because they understand that taste preferences and dietary patterns formed in childhood carry through into adulthood; “a satisfied customer today is a loyal customer tomorrow” as they say. These companies recognise the significant impact children’s dietary preferences have on overall household purchasing and adult eating choices too.

Growing up in the 90s I had a great love for after-school TV shows and to this day, old TV ad jingles bring back feelings of nostalgia… the milky bars are on me! The snacks I demanded for my lunchbox (nutrient-free and sugar-ladened favourites included Tiny Teddies, Roll Ups and Le Snaks) became household staples for Mum and Dad too.

Fast forward to 2024 and harmful marketing on TV is even more entrenched, gamified and bolstered by sophisticated online marketing driven by algorithms and personal data.

The end result of all this is diets high in junk food and fizzy drinks which increase the risk of developing a variety of ill-health conditions including digestive issues, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, poor oral health and mental health problems. When one in 10 children in New Zealand are having teeth removed due to tooth decay and more children and young people are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, it’s more important than ever to protect them from harmful advertising and support access to nutritious diets.

Our health system is under extreme pressure with direct healthcare costs related to poor diets estimated at $2 billion per year. If our government fails to act on junk food marketing, it is choosing to prioritise the profits of transnational corporations over people. Why should New Zealand taxpayers bear the cost of ill-health created by these commercial entities that face no restrictions on the marketing of products that cause such harm?

The government has laid out an apparent commitment to prevention in its Policy Statement on Health 2024-2027, stating it needs to be proactive in responding to preventable diseases by addressing modifiable risk factors including poor nutrition. Indeed, the word prevention is mentioned 45 times in the document. It’s great the government recognises the problem and the solutions needed – but without any action the words ring hollow.

Health Coalition Aotearoa, along with health experts nationwide, have provided copious amounts of evidence that action to restrict junk food and sugary drink marketing to kids is needed now. Governments overseas are listening to the evidence and acting. Why aren’t we? New Zealand has no mandatory, enforceable regulations that prevent junk food and sugary drink companies from directly targeting children. And research I’ve led has shown repeatedly that voluntary, industry-led guidelines don’t work. The advertising codes we have right now are voluntary and toothless. Even if companies promise to abide by them, no one is checking to make sure they do and there are no penalties if they don’t.

The UK example shows there are measures at our disposal, it just takes political will to put them in place. The New Zealand public wants to protect children from this marketing and the government says it’s committed to prevention – all that’s left is to do it.

Keep going!

It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)

KaiOctober 9, 2024

Olive oil costs heaps at the moment. Can local producers come to the rescue?

Madeleine Holden

Guest writer

It’s hard for local producers to compete with European and Aussie oil. (Image: The Spinoff)

A global shortage means imported olive oil is more costly than it’s been since the late 90s. Can local producers compete on price now?

The past couple of years have seen olive oil prices spiking higher than a Mariah Carey top note. Heat waves and drought in the Mediterranean, particularly in Spain – the country responsible for producing 40% of the world’s olives – caused global olive oil prices to shoot up to levels not seen since the last peak in 1997.

A litre of Woolworths home-brand extra virgin olive oil (EVOO is the good stuff, FYI), made from 100% Spanish olives, now costs $18.70, compared to $12ish at the start of last year. It’s enough to have the tight-fisted among us crying hot tears into our stingily dressed salad.

But what about the olive oil we produce locally? Can New Zealand producers of EVOO come to the rescue, restoring the ability of consumers to take home a bottle at a price that won’t make your eyes water?

Since prices started skyrocketing midway through last year, New Zealand producers have seen a “huge increase” in demand for locally grown olive oil, according to Emma Glover, the executive officer of Olives New Zealand. “Next weekend, we’ve got our New Zealand olive oil awards, and a lot of the growers are going ‘Well actually, I’ve just about sold out of my oil already,’” Glover says. “We can’t keep up with demand at this point.”

Many oils from New Zealand’s largest olive oil producer, Hawke’s Bay-based The Village Press, have been out of stock at supermarkets and online for months, but its website says new season oils are back in stock from early October.

Despite high demand for olive oil produced locally, New Zealand producers have a small share of the market here. “We produce less than 10% of the extra virgin olive oil that is consumed in New Zealand,” Glover continues, adding that this figure has been stable over time. “We’re pretty boutique, small producers.”

What are the barriers preventing New Zealand producers from competing on price with imported oil? Chief among them is scale, says Ross Vintiner, who owns a medium-sized grove in Martinborough, producing Dali olive oil. “The problem with New Zealand is you’ve got a lot of small producers and very few large producers, and so you don’t get the economies of scale.” Large numbers of small growers face “very high costs around pruning and harvesting, and then they’ve got all the other compliance costs, like Food Safety”.

Ross Vintiner harvesting olives. (Photo supplied)

There’s also competition from our familiar rival, the Aussies. Australians produce “very high-quality olive oil at scale”, Vintiner continues. “There are some growers in Australia who have millions of trees … and their whole operation is mechanical. So their unit costs per litre of olive oil are way below what we could produce.” As a result, Aussie olive oil is increasingly elbowing out European oil (let alone local stuff) on supermarket shelves.

On top of this, workers are in short supply, and it’s hard to keep landowners interested in growing olives. Glover says higher and more immediate profits for crops like wine grapes and apples mean “some of our bigger groves in the last few years have been converted”.

So the chances of local producers being able to compete on price are low, even with the cost of European oils high by historical standards. But supermarket shoppers looking for rock bottom EVOO prices have never been the target market for local producers, and likely never will be; instead, they target the farmers-markets-and-Farro segment.

Which leaves consumers with a couple of choices. One is to shell out more for local olive oil, which even if it can’t compete on price, is fresher than imported stuff and among the highest quality globally (Vintiner’s Dali oil has twice won the New York international olive oil competition – what he calls the Olympics of olive oil.)

The other option, for the less discerning and/or flush consumer, is to switch to rice bran or sunflower oil while they wait for the price of imported olive oil to drop. “The good news for Spain is that this year they’ve had a good harvest,” Vintiner says. “So all predictions, by the futures market and everyone else, is that the price of extra virgin olive oil will actually drop.”

By Glover’s guess, that’ll be around the end of this summer in Aotearoa. “Theoretically we should … start seeing the oil coming through around February,” Glover says, but in the meantime, not much can be done about the high prices. “It is what it is for this year.”