Category: Food and Nutrition
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Eight ANZJPH articles that made headlines in 2025
Hollie Harwood Each year over 1.1 million readers visit and download articles from the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health (ANZJPH). While our journal citations measure impact, they don’t capture one of ANZJPH’s unique strengths – the way that our evidence-based articles influence policy and practice, support advocacy,…
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Supporting families to raise healthy kids: The INFANT program
Rachel Laws, Penny Love, Megan Adam, and Kylie Hesketh Anyone who has endured a high chair standoff over food, or battled nap time with an exhausted child, will know that raising a baby is not for the faint hearted. The first 1,000 days, from conception to two years, are critical.…
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Improving access to healthy local food in regional and rural communities
Stephanie Godrich, Rebecca Lindberg, Kate Wingrove, and Cherie Russell Australia’s national food system is fragile. Climate disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic show how quickly crises or disasters result in people being unable to find food. This is particularly true for those in regional and rural areas. Our national food system…
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The global food system’s broken: there are now more obese children than underweight
Claire Johnson For the first time in history, obesity among school-age children and adolescents has overtaken underweight worldwide. That is the headline finding of UNICEF’s 2025 Child Nutrition Report: Feeding Profit released today, which I co-authored during my time at UNICEF Headquarters as the Global Technical Lead for Food Environments…
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Ramadan: a chance to form healthier habits?
Dr Muhammad Aziz Rahman, Professor of Public Health Ramadan, the sacred month for Muslims around the world, commenced this year on 1 March. A quarter of the world’s population is observing this holy month of fasting, during which practising Muslims abstain from food or drink from sunrise to sunset. Besides…
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This stuff is killing us
We’re calling on the next Australian Government to take sustained steps to ensure fewer people get sick, including acting on obesity. Find out more on PHAA’s 2025 Election Priorities site. This is part of an ongoing series explaining our 2025 Federal Election asks. Read the other articles in the series here.…
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Food sovereignty vital for First Nations Australians’ economic security, parliamentary inquiry shows
Dr Alana Gall Prior to invasion, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (hereafter First Nations peoples) had an uninterrupted, deep, and interconnected relationship to their lands, waterways, and seas that ensured optimum health, and cultural, spiritual, social, and emotional wellbeing. For thousands of years, advanced agriculture and aquacultural techniques supplied…
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Drones with fast food and alcohol are on the way, but at what cost?
Victoria Farrar Drones are becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives, and it’s anticipated that drone delivery of fast food and alcohol will be the next big use for drones in our society. Judging by the geographic reach of drone food delivery, which is already available in parts of Brisbane…
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Food Ministers urged to prioritise health over industry interests
Damian Maganja, Veronica Le Nevez, Andrea Schmidtke and Sally Witchalls Walk into any supermarket and you will be accosted by shelf upon shelf of unhealthy foods, from soft drinks that contain up to 14 teaspoons of sugar to whole aisles of confectionery, chips and biscuits. Even foods we might think…
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Developing public health nutrition advocates
Damian Maganja, Bronwyn Ashton, Rachelle Pretorius, Meron Lewis and Anastassia Demeshko Everyone needs to eat, and what we eat is vital to our health and wellbeing. But what we can, want, and do eat is heavily shaped by external influences. Our preferences and habits, available choices, access to foods, and…
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Baby and toddler foods are not what they seem
Jane Martin and Andrea Schmidtke Picture this. You head into the supermarket to stock up on food for the week and a trip away at the weekend. Convenient food for your two-year-old is what you’re after — something healthy, but also something you know they’ll eat and that can be…
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Food strategies need ingredients like equity, justice, and sovereignty
Dr Amy Carrad The ACT Government released a Draft Canberra Region Local Food Strategy in September 2023, which claims it will “increase community access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.” It aims to do so by leaning heavily on community gardens as a means of increasing fresh produce in the…
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Government regulation urgently needed to protect young children’s diets from food marketing influence
Dr Alexandra Chung, Monash University Babies and toddlers can’t yet write a grocery shopping list, but they are considered fair game when it comes to food marketing. Our new research published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health reveals how babies and toddlers are being targeted with front-of-pack…
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Advocacy strategies for advancing health in all policies: what works for trade policymaking?
Dr Belinda Townsend, Australian Research Centre for Health Equity, Australian National University, Ms Brigitte Tenni, School of Psychology and Population Health, La Trobe University & Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne, Ms Sharni Goldman, Australian Research Centre for Health Equity, Australian National University & Associate Prof Deborah Gleeson,…
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Time to enact food policies in the National Preventive Health Strategy
Dr Bronwyn Ashton and Damian Maganja, Co-Convenors of the PHAA Food and Nutrition Special Interest Group New data released on 27 June 2023 by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) showed that unhealthy weight and dietary factors continue to be the second and third largest preventable causes of…
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Next steps to helping children thrive with an expanded South Australian School Breakfast Program
Dr Alanna Sincovich, Senior Research Officer Telethon Kids Institute, Executive Committee PHAA SA Branch; Ms Mary Brushe, Study Manager Telethon Kids Institute, Vice President PHAA SA Branch. In the recently launched 2023-24 South Australian State Budget, the Premier announced an additional $6.5 million of funding to expand the state’s School…
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A future of autonomous vehicles delivering junk food 24/7 is coming, health researchers warn
PHAA While the public health community welcomed the Healthy Kids Advertising Bill 2023 announced by Independent MP Sophie Scamps this week, some public health experts are also warning that new challenges in junk food accessibility and advertising are emerging. A new study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal…
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Public health experts brief Agriculture Committee on food security
Lily Pratt, PHAA Policy Officer On 2 June the Australian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Agriculture held their first (and so far, only) health-specific hearing regarding their inquiry into and report on strengthening and safeguarding food security. PHAA was invited to attend after completing our submission in December 2022. We joined…
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Parliament debates influence of unhealthy product ads on children
Malcolm Baalman, PHAA Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor Yesterday, key members of federal Parliament with health experience – including an Assistant Minister – agreed that action is urgently needed to meet community expectations about protecting children from advertising of unhealthy products including junk food, alcohol, and gambling. The debate (p.61 onwards)…
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Ramadan Fasting: Opportunities for Public Health Professionals
Professor Muhammad Aziz Rahman The second most widely practised religion is Islam and there are over 1.7 billion Muslims globally which is about a quarter of the world population. In Australia, Muslims comprise about 2.3% of the population, or around 650,000 people. Practising Muslims observe the holy month of fasting…
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Clear nutrition labels can encourage healthier eating habits. Here’s how Australia’s food labelling can improve
Gary Sacks, Deakin University and Jasmine Chan, Deakin University In your trips to the supermarket, you’ve probably come across the Health Star Rating on the front of some foods. You might even be one of the 70% of Australians who say they read the detailed nutrition information on the back…
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The rise of dark advertising: gambling, alcohol, junk food ads bombarding people in Australia
Melanie Parker, PHAA Note: Article updated on 26/01/2023 to correct first table, sixth paragraph, and fourth-last paragraph. After experts voiced concerns about a lack of transparency of social media companies on how people are targeted by unhealthy product advertisers, we decided to investigate how often our own profiles were…
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Food, nutrition and climate: What was on the table at COP27?
Holley Jones, PHAA Food and Nutrition Special Interest Group member COP 27 in Egypt The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in Egypt in November, with the intention to drive collaboration and enact commitments made in…
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Australia is dragging its feet on healthy eating. In 5 years we’ve made woeful progress
Gary Sacks, Deakin University and Davina Mann, Deakin University Australia is falling behind other countries in addressing the unhealthy state of our diets. Several other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico, have recently taken major steps to help improve population nutrition and prevent obesity. But our latest assessment,…
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PHAA Life Member Christina Pollard on four decades of being curious
Associate Professor Christina Pollard (left, with PHAA President, Adjunct Professor Tarun Weeramanthri), was awarded Life Membership of the PHAA recently in Adelaide. She explains her varied career to date in this, the second story in our series of 2022 PHAA award winners. Qualifications 1981 Bachelor of Applied Science (Nutrition &…
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How dark is ‘dark advertising’? We audited Facebook, Google and other platforms to find out
Nicholas Carah, The University of Queensland; Aimee Brownbill, The University of Queensland; Amy Shields Dobson, Curtin University; Brady Robards, Monash University; Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Kiah Hawker, The University of Queensland; Lauren Hayden, The University of Queensland, and Xue Ying Tan, Queensland University of Technology Once upon a…
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Independent MP Dr Sophie Scamps’ bid to address Australia’s childhood obesity levels
Danielle Gavanescu, PHAA Intern and Master of Public Health student Independent MP Dr Sophie Scamps has announced the development of a Private Member’s Bill that will restrict junk food marketing to children in a bid to curb Australia’s growing obesity epidemic. Dr Sophie Scamps calls for ban on junk food…
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Food and drinks are getting sweeter. Even if it’s not all sugar, it’s bad for our health
Cherie Russell, Deakin University; Carley Grimes, Deakin University; Mark Lawrence, Deakin University; Phillip Baker, Deakin University, and Rebecca Lindberg, Deakin University Humans have an evolutionary preference for sweetness. Sweet foods, like fruit and honey, were an important energy source for our ancestors. However, in the modern world, sweetened foods are…
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Q&A: Indigenous Peoples’ Inclusion in Food Governance
This piece was first published by the Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney. Read the original article. For NAIDOC Week, Dr Mark Lock speaks to Dr Belinda Reeve about championing health equity for First Nations Australians and their meaningful inclusion in all dimensions of food governance. By Dr Mark J Lock, University of Technology Sydney & Deakin…
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Who gets a say in public health nutrition? Five perspectives from the field
Christina Zorbas, Andrew Brown, Phoebe Nagorcka-Smith, Veronica Nunez, Dheepa Jeyapalan Introduction: A core tenet of public health nutrition is identifying and enacting actions to equitably improve population nutrition. We should act in a manner that proportionately addresses structural drivers of social and/or economic disadvantage. The increased focus on better including…