Dame Valerie Adams wants her unborn child to know "a new normal".
Adams, fronting the Big Change Starts Small campaign aimed at helping to reduce child obesity, is due to have her first child in October - and says she intends her baby grow up with a highly developed sense of what is "normal" when it comes to food and drink.
"It's all a part of wanting to give your child the best possible start in life. I want this baby to grow up thinking water is normal and fizzy drinks are not; that fruit is normal and chocolate and chips aren't.
"It's not that you can't have those things but they should be only once in a while or a treat - not a normal course of events."
Adams decided to front the campaign because "you can see so clearly how big a problem it is here. We must do whatever we can to help the situation."
The latest New Zealand Health Survey showed 11 per cent, or one in nine Kiwi children aged 2-14 were obese; a rise of 3 per cent over the last decade. A further 21 per cent of children were also considered overweight, but not obese.
Children living in the most deprived areas were three times as likely to be obese as those living in more affluent areas.
Recent research, published in the International Journal Of Obesity and in the New Zealand Herald last month, linked children who were overweight or obese from as young as 3 were at greater risk of ill health later in life. The research studied the health of over 1000 people in Dunedin born in 1972-73.
The campaign is supported by a website that offers nutritious and affordable meal ideas and ways to become more active as a family www.eatmovelive.govt.nz. Other notables helping in the campaign are former Silver Ferns skipper Casey Kopua, All Black Israel Dagg, former Black Caps captain Brendon McCullum and Warriors star Shaun Johnson.
Adams says she understands the difficulties of families, particularly those on low incomes, when it comes to nutrition and advocates a website helping families make healthy affordable meals (http://myfamily.kiwi/foods).
Adams, herself from a family of five raised in a poor part of South Auckland, says her own childhood involved a diet that "wasn't always nutritious", with portion control was sometimes overlooked as the children grew bigger.
"We never went hungry even though there was only $40 a week to be spent on five of us," she says. "There was a lot of cabin bread, tapioca, rice - a lot of carbs. We had tinned fish and mum and dad grew vegetables out the back seasonally. We hardly ever had fast food or takeaways - we couldn't afford it."
Now, says Adams, she knows enough about nutrition and healthy eating through her career as an athlete to know how to start her baby off in life - beginning with breastfeeding, as that is all babies need until about 6 months old, and then incorporating advice from sources advising on the importance of eating good food early - like http://myfamily.kiwi/foods/baby-food.
"One of the best things about being an athlete is that I have expanded my knowledge of food and food types and I make a lot of food choices myself.
"It's different from a diet - as soon as you mention the word 'diet' people think, 'Oooh, wonder how many lettuce leaves I have to eat?'. It's not about a diet - it's about a lifestyle. That's how we have to help our kids grow up."
Adams says she is only too aware the twin evils of electronics and too much food/too much junk food are damaging our children.
"In my day, we didn't have a lot of money - so we didn't even have bikes and a trampoline was out of the question. We had knucklebones, elastic, hopscotch, my dad made us a gutterboard and there was a park next door.
"So we didn't have much so we were always outside and always playing because there were no video games, no screens, no electronics. It's really clear now that too many children are staying inside, watching a screen, pushing buttons and just sitting."
Then there is the strong link in all New Zealand cultures - not just Polynesian - between food and loved ones.
"We love our families and our friends and our kids by feeding them," she says. "That's often how we show our love. Think about it - we don't just gather, we always say, 'come and have a meal'. We rarely gather to play games or pursue other things - there's nearly always food involved and it often brings bad habits like portion size along with it.
"It's hurting our youngsters."