Nutrition publications

This document provides evidence-based population health advice for pregnant and breastfeeding women on healthy eating and being physically active.

The Food and Nutrition Guidelines for Healthy Infants and Toddlers (Aged 0-2): A background paper - Partially revised December 2012, brings together and updates key areas of food and nutrition that affect the health of infants and toddlers.

This paper provides an analysis of the usefulness and operational feasibility of an indicator to monitor both obesity in children and young people, and the effectiveness of the collective strategies and interventions used to prevent and manage childhood obesity. The work uses a ‘Leading for Outcomes’ approach, which is a systems-level framework employed by the Clinical Services Directorate of the Ministry of Health, with an initial focus on chronic disease prevention and management.

Obesity is one of the most important modifiable risk factors for a number of major diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, ischaemic heart disease, ischaemic stroke and several common cancers. In the last two decades, the prevalence of overweight and obesity in developed countries has increased so quickly that is has been described as an epidemic. However, until now we have lacked a detailed description of obesity trends in New Zealand over an extended period of time.