Call for updated national survey to see what New Zealanders are eating

As dietary factors and obesity have taken over as the key cause of the global burden of disease, Healthier Lives Director Professor Jim Mann and other nutrition experts say there’s a desperate need for a national nutrition survey to see what New Zealanders are eating, with the most recent survey a decade old.

Professor of Medicine and Human Nutrition Jim Mann and Honorary Associate Professor Winsome Parnell, a former director of the Ministry of Health-funded 2008-09 Adult Nutrition Survey, say serious thought needs to go into planning for an updated national nutrition survey with the last adult survey carried out a decade ago and a children’s survey in 2002.

“In general, inappropriate nutrition has taken over from smoking as the number one health issue facing New Zealanders,” Professor Mann says.

“Good nutrition is essential for reducing the risk of premature death and ill health associated with three major diseases – cancer, coronary heart disease and diabetes. If you are going to make policy and guidelines about nutrition, you need to know what New Zealanders are eating.”

Associate Professor Parnell says there was a huge difference in what New Zealanders ate between a 1997 survey and that in 2008-09. “There were big changes in that time and we are now another decade on; we can imagine what we think New Zealanders are eating, but if you don’t have a look, then you don’t know.”

Regular monitoring is important to evaluate any policies put in place, she explains. For example, after the last national survey, fortification of some foods was recommended with folic acid and iodised salt in bread.

“We give nutrition advice, so we are obliged to check whether people take that advice. And, if not, find out why not and what got in the way of that happening.”

It is also important from a food safety perspective. Food Standards Australia New Zealand regulates what is in food in relation to additives and acceptable levels of contaminants or pesticides and they need the food intake data generated from a national survey to do their job properly, Associate Professor Parnell says.

Food monitoring is a focus of a symposium being organised by the University’s Edgar Diabetes & Obesity Research Centre, the Healthier Lives National Science Challenge and the Riddet Institute next week. Both Professor Mann and Associate Professor Parnell are speaking at the Focus on Fibre and Food Monitoring symposium being held in Dunedin on 11 and 12 February, together with a raft of other nutrition experts both from within the University and beyond.

Fibre is another key focus for the symposium with recent University of Otago research undertaken by Professor Mann, Dr Andrew Reynolds, Dr Lisa Te Morenga (now at Victoria University) and Professor John Cummings from the University of Dundee, UK, highlighting the health benefits of dietary fibre and wholegrain intake, recently receiving widespread interest globally.

The series of systematic reviews and meta analyses identified that higher intakes of fibre and whole grains were associated with reduced heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and reduced mortality, and that increasing intakes reduced body weight and total cholesterol.

“We are saying nutrition is incredibly important for human health, but currently we don’t actually know what New Zealanders are eating,” Professor Mann says.

“If we are saying there is a lot of evidence for the benefits of dietary fibre – and the whole world is talking about it – how much fibre are we having in New Zealand? We haven’t got a clue, but I am confident that it is well below what we now recommend for reducing the risk of diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes.”

More information about the Focus on Fibre and Food Monitoring symposium:

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For further information and interviews, please contact

Fleur Templeton, Healthier Lives NSC on 021 225 4218