Dr Anna Rolleston The Cardiac Clinic

Sometimes I wonder how we got ourselves into the situation we are in.
Forty per cent of us die from heart disease or related disorders and over half of us are either overweight or obese.

I started to make a list of societal reasons, ie reasons outside of our control as a consumer or an individual, and the list just kept getting longer and longer.

• Milk is more expensive than fizzy drink.

• You can buy a combo meal at a takeaway joint for about $5 and get a drink as well, but a standard pack of sushi (without a drink) is between $7 and $8.

• Drinks made with sugar are marketed as healthy ‘vitamin water'.

• You will be lucky to find fresh fish for sale at less than $25 a kilo.

• Good quality multigrain bread is far more expensive per loaf than plain white bread.

• The mince that has the highest fat content is the cheapest.

• The dairy products we buy in the supermarket are expensive, despite New Zealand being one of the biggest dairy producing countries in the world.

• Food packages are covered with pictures and slogans enticing consumers to buy yet the nutritional information grid is always on the back of the packet (not on direct display) and even then you need a certain amount of smarts to understand it.

• Gym memberships cost in the vicinity of $800-1000 per year, but you can't get that paid for by the government. They'll pay for your treatment once you are sick though, even if it costs the country tens of thousands of dollars.

• Healthy community initiatives – like ‘City on Its Feet' and ‘Fruit in Schools' – have their funding cut.

• Caffeinated and high sugar energy drinks can be purchased by a five-year-old in the absence of parent supervision, no questions asked.

• Vegetables, nuts, wholegrain foods, fresh fish and milk products are never displayed at the end of the aisle in the supermarket, in the ‘key marketing positions'. If you're after a bag of chips, fizzy drink, beer, chocolate biscuits or lollies you'll find them there.

• Food is so abundant and convenient these days. You can go out and buy almost any food you like at almost any time of the day or night.

• Cigarette smoking is a key risk factor for the development of heart disease and causes the death of 5000 New Zealanders every year yet you can pick up a packet at your corner dairy.

• At the service station you can buy three chocolate bars for the price of one and get rewards points too. Why are the yoghurts in the chiller or the muesli bars never on special like that? How come they don't have fresh fruit for sale at the counter when you're standing there paying for your petrol? Probably because the price of fruit and vege has increased by 12.2 per cent.

I could go on, but I already feel like I'm ranting. I agree that there is individual responsibility. However, how responsible can the average individual be when, if we look at just one area, nutrition, the odds are stacked in favour of those that manufacture and sell food, and the government which earns GST from the sale of that food?