NZ Food Environment Survey

How healthy are Aotearoa New Zealand’s food environments? Assessing the impact of recent food policies 2018-2021

This study provides an update on the state of New Zealand’s food environments for 2018-2021 with a focus on the impact of recent government and food company polices, commitments and actions. The results are summarised in the Executive Summary and the Full Report.

What did we do?

This survey consists of multiple sub-studies carried out between 2018-2021, assessing the impact of:

• Government implementation of healthy food policies
• The impact of the Advertising Standards Authority Children and Young People’s Code on the marketing environment
• Food and Drinks Guidelines in Council-owned leisure centres
• Supermarket promotions, check-outs and private labels
• Food industry commitments

What did we find?

New Zealand’s food environments are still largely unhealthy. Where policies, codes and commitments by government and industry do exist, the progress on implementing these is patchy and there are too many gaps. Some are too weak to have an impact even if they are followed, such as the Children and Young People’s (CYPA) Code to restrict marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks to children. There are examples of strong commitments being actioned and policies being implemented when sufficient support is available, such as in South Auckland leisure centres.

Previous New Zealand Food Environment Surveys

Vandevijvere S, Mackay S, D’Souza E, Swinburn B. How healthy are New Zealand food environments? A comprehensive assessment 2014-2017. The University of Auckland. Auckland, New Zealand. Full report.