Cover Story
The big picture
by Amanda Spratt
It’s a supersize task, but experts believe New Zealand can be a world leader in the fight against fat. No country has worked out a way to curb obesity yet. Is it mission: impossible?
She threw up after her first half-marathon. Over 21 kilometres she fell, more than once, picked herself up each time and kept on going, vomiting after she crossed the finish line.
It’s not the most romantic story about someone best associated with the pink blush of roses and English gardens, but it’s one that broadcaster and gardening enthusiast Maggie Barry is immensely proud of. It was her 43rd birthday, and the end of an eight-day Outward Bound course she had planned to do since she was a teenager, but always put off.
Barry says she was “lazy” in her twenties and thirties. Gardening once kept her fit, but when her television career took off, it went out the window.
“I used to grab meals on the run, snack a lot and have a sedentary lifestyle. I’d go for long lunches with my friends, and the only thing I’d exercise was my jaw. I got pretty slack about my weight. I would yo-yo up and down. If my clothes didn’t fit, I’d just go out and buy a whole new set.”
Barry, who has joined more gyms than she cares to remember, knew that she needed to change things, partly to keep up with her son Joey. “I didn’t want to turn 50 and be overweight.”
Now she takes the stairs, walks her son to school the long way, swears by her pedometer. One size doesn’t fit all, she says, you have to do what works for you. And of course, you don’t have to push yourself until you throw up.
Barry never thought that she would take up exercise with such a vengeance or motivate others to, but if people use her as inspiration – the “garden slug” who went through an exercise metamorphosis – that’s great. “If people look at me and say, ‘If Maggie can do it, I can do it’, I’m happy to fill that role.”
Barry has been one of the most popular faces of the government’s bid to get New Zealanders up and moving with its “Push Play” campaign. Overseen by the government agency SPARC (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), it’s one of a raft of initiatives aimed at reducing the national belly and making Kiwis healthier.
It’s none too soon. Experts call it “one of the greatest epidemics of our time”. The adult rate of obesity has more than doubled in 15 years. One in five adults and one in 10 children is obese. Meanwhile, we are gorging on junk food. We spent 37 percent more than last year at supermarkets, grocery stores and dairies, but 67 percent more at takeaway shops. The number of pizza joints has more than doubled in one year and households spend more on confectionery than on fresh fruit.
At the same time, we have more cars per head of population than LA, and only slightly more than half of us are physically active. More cyclists per capita are killed on our roads than in the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and Germany.
The amount spent on healthcare for obesity-related conditions is expected to hit $1b in 15 years as a third of Pakeha and half of all Maori and Pacific Islanders are predicted to have type 2 diabetes and related complications. In the US, the treatment of type 2 diabetes alone accounts for eight percent of the health budget.
But the government is putting its money where the ever-widening mouth is. This year, Health Minister Pete Hodgson announced $76m over four years would be committed to fighting obesity, with more to come.
The experts tire of people who insist that there is no epidemic or that being a bit overweight is okay. Almost every comprehensive, controlled study says otherwise. We have become accustomed to seeing fat people, says SPARC’s Deb Hurdle.
If we do nothing, we will pay, says Glasgow University’s head of human nutrition Professor Mike Lean. “There are countries that are facing bankruptcy by the healthcare costs of diabetes.”
Lean believes New Zealand can be a world leader in the fight against obesity. International medical journal the Lancet has applauded New Zealand’s approach to what some call the greatest public health threat to face the world. A recent editorial in the journal holds out Hodgson as a fat-fighting superhero, “setting the agenda for fighting obesity not just in his country but worldwide”.
New Zealand has a manageable-sized population and people care about one another, says Lean. We have our own food industry, we haven’t got the European Union imposed on us and New Zealand politicians are listening.
They’re also leading by example. Over the past few years critics have had new reason to call our MPs lightweights. We were recently treated to photos of a reduced-fat Act leader Rodney Hide cavorting semi-naked through the pages of a Sunday paper, Lianne Dalziel used Anna Nicole Smith as inspiration for her weight loss, National MP Ann Tolley came back from recess noticeably, and mysteriously, thinner, while, after one horrible attempt to lose weight with Reductil, Marian Hobbs is halfway to her goal weight of 68kg, from 110kg, with exercise and better eating.
“Mission On”, the $67m four-year programme to tackle childhood obesity and health, has been welcomed both here and overseas. It includes such initiatives as banning unhealthy food from school tuckshops and encouraging advertising-industry initiatives to reduce marketing of junk food to kids.
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