Auckland A&E medical doctor and lifestyle medicine advocate, Dr Caitlin Randles, says it is essential that our food supply and the obesogenic environment be made into a political issue.

If it doesn't, she warns, the health disparity between rich and poor in New Zealand will continue to widen.

In an article published in Whole Food Living magazine's print and online edition today, Dr Randles says "the rhetoric that obesity results from unhealthy food choices or a lack of will power remains a concerning source of stigma.

"It also continues to perpetuate the inequalities we see in our health statistics because people feel personal shame or blame if they are affected by a diet-related chronic illness.”

Dr Randles notes that unless we address wider issues in the obesity debate, "the health advice in our clinic rooms will be largely redundant. Upstream interventions through policy change need to be a large part of the conversation," she says.

"The default environment needs to favour healthy lifestyle choices rather than a postcode lottery. The individual food choice approach is failing us."

The full article can be viewed here: wholefoodliving.life/obesity-its-a-postcode-lottery/

© Scoop Media