Source: Health Coalition Aotearoa
The Government must act swiftly to address the shameful increase in rates of food insecurity facing nearly a third of children in Aotearoa, and the disproportionate harm for those from Pacific and Māori households.
The annual NZ Health Survey data for 2023-2024 showed that the proportion of children from homes where food ran out sometimes or often had increased by nearly six percentage points in just one year, from 21.3 per cent to 27 per cent.
Alarmingly over half of Pacific children (54.8 per cent) and over a third of Māori children (34.3 per cent) were from homes where they were not getting the food they needed sometimes or often.
HCA food policy expert advisory group member and registered dietitian Mafi Funaki-Tahifote said the data reflected what she was seeing in her work in Auckland, particularly in the South Auckland community.
“Households are spending a lot more on food, not only due to price increases, but also from the impacts of the deeper forces of escalating fixed costs of housing and power bills, to name a few, which means left-over money available to spend on food is diminished.”
She said poor access to healthy food had a significant impact on children’s health and wellbeing, which is why the data was devastating news.
“It impacts on their growth, on their health such as on their immunity, on their educational ability and how well they do at school. Nutritionally those kids are not able to function optimally in terms of concentration, their moods, studies, play and sports.”
HCA co-chair Professor Lisa Te Morenga said the high number of children going without food was an indictment on Government actions that have penalised the most vulnerable communities and failed to ensure health and wellbeing are prioritised over commercial goals in its food policies.
“This is a result of political decisions, like aligning benefit increases to the CPI instead of wages, imposing benefit sanctions and failing to ensure access to healthy food for all households.”
“We have about 30-odd ministries and agencies responsible for food in some way, but no co-ordination to ensure that people can access the food they need.”
HCA urges the Government to urgently expand the healthy school lunches programme and establish a co-ordinating group for all food policy, with a focus on ending food poverty and reversing damaging economic and social welfare policies that put children’s health at risk.
“These findings show how important programmes like the free healthy school lunches are as a vital safety net for food insecure children. It also shows that we urgently need to expand it because many of the children impacted by food insecurity go to schools that aren’t eligible for the lunches under the current criteria,” Te Morenga said.
